Quality of the care process for children with intellectual disabilities: a Delphi study

This short report explores the quality of the care process for children with intellectual disabilities. A Delphi procedure was used to identify a set of indicators for the quality of the care process reflecting the perspectives of the care providers, the parents and the experts. The sample consisted of 59 individuals involved in different ways in the process of the caring for children with intellectual disabilities. The first round of the Delphi procedure resulted in 56 themes, distributed across four different phases of the care process. In the second round of the Delphi procedure, these themes were elaborated into 346 indicators that were, in turn, evaluated on their importance for the quality of the care process by the respondents. Finally, 328 indicators did meet the 85% criterion for consensus. Six themes proved to be relevant in all phases of care: transfer of information, report, consultation, attitude of care provider, respect and appointments. The operationalization of quality of care presented in this study points in the direction of actually measuring, monitoring and improving the quality of care for children with intellectual disabilities.