The impact of early referral on milestone development of babies with Down Syndrome at the Bloemfontein Child Information Centre, South Africa
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The Bloemfontein Child Information Centre (BCIC) was established in 1985 with a focus on community service in the Free State, South Africa. At the BCIC infants with Down Syndrome (DS) are enrolled in an integrated developmental programme called the Developmental Resource Stimulation Programme (DRSP) as part of their intervention protocol. Aim: This retrospective, descriptive design study aimed to obtain information on the impact of early referral on the milestone development of infants with DS at BCIC. Methods and Procedures: The data were collected at the BCIC from January 2010 until July 2023 and included 87 infants with DS. The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (3rd Edition) (Bayley-III) was used to determine the scaled scores for five developmental domains at the following milestone development ages (in months): 3-, 6-, 9-, 12-, 16-, 18- and over 24-months. The data is presented using descriptive statistics and visualisations. To establish the effect of various factors on the scores, linear mixed-effects models were utilised. Outcomes and Results: This study demonstrated that early referral does have an impact on future development. Specifically, significant differences (-values ) in scaled scores were observed for four of the five developmental domains for the following three factors: milestone development ages, frequency of follow-up visits and time of referral. Furthermore, the combination of early referral and frequent follow-up intervention sessions resulted in significantly improved scaled scores (-values ) for the receptive language domain. Conclusions and Implications: Infants with DS should be referred before eight (8) weeks for optimal changes to positively impact milestone development. Implications for practice Early intervention assists in the analyses of challenges and needs of infants with DS. The positive impact on early development is evident when infants with DS are referred early for early intervention. Sustainable development outcomes are proven. The importance of early referrals highlights occupational therapy intervention for infants with DS.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".