Neurodevelopmental Clinic
This page explains why your child has an appointment for the Neurodevelopmental Clinic at either Gloucestershire Royal Hospital or Cheltenham General Hospital and why it is important for your child to attend their appointment.
What is the Neurodevelopmental Clinic?
The Neurodevelopmental Clinic is an outpatient clinic where doctors and developmental assistants assess children’s developmental skills. This will show if your child’s development is within the normal range for their age, or if they would benefit from extra support to reach their full potential as they grow up.
The assessment of children aged 1 year will take about 60 minutes and those carried out with children aged 2 to 3 years old will take about 90 minutes.
Why my child?
We know that some children, who had problems around the time they were born, or in the first weeks of life, are at risk of developmental problems as they grow up. This may be because they:
- were born prematurely (before 32 weeks in the womb)
- were born at a low birth weight (less than 3.3lbs/1.5kg)
- were unwell in the neonatal period (for example from having an infection, seizures or as a result of a lack of oxygen at birth)
It is understood that your child had problems either at the time of delivery, or soon after birth which is why an assessment of their development is recommended.
Why now?
It is a government guideline that all babies who fall into the categories listed in the ‘Why my child’ section have a developmental assessment.
This should take place between their 2nd ‘corrected’ birthday (2 years after their due date) and 3rd actual birthday (3 years after their date of birth).
Any baby born before 30 weeks in the womb, or at a birthweight of under 1kg, may benefit from an extra assessment at around 1 year of age.
My child has been discharged from the paediatrician already – do I still need to come?
These assessments are to assess your child’s development only and are done as well as the medical reviews, for which your child will be seeing a consultant neonatal paediatrician. It is important that you bring your child to their developmental assessment even if they have been discharged from routine medical follow-ups.
Results
Your health visitor or other health professional will talk about the results of the assessment with you.
If it is found that your child needs extra support they will help you to arrange this.
The results are also sent to a national audit group who look at the results of all 2 year developmental assessments carried out on the groups listed earlier on this page. The information collected is important as it helps health and educational services to plan the best care for the future.
My child does not have any developmental problems – do I still need to come?
Yes. It is important for us to see all children who were born in the ‘at risk’ groups for two reasons:
- Firstly we need to assess for even the small problems in your child’s development, which you may not have noticed
- Secondly we need to collect information on all babies born into ‘at risk’ groups and not only base our knowledge on information collected from those children who have extra developmental needs. The information helps to give us greater understanding of how ‘at risk’ children develop, which in turn we can then use to advise new parents in the future
Contact information
If you have any further questions then please contact:
Secretary to Dr A Maitre
Tel: 0300 422 5188
Monday to Friday, 1:00pm to 4:00pm