The condition for a successful rehabilitation is an effective and teamwork driven plan that is designed by experts on the basis of a detailed evaluation of the functioning. A great and long-term part of the rehabilitation of the deaf and hard of hearing is dedicated to communication. The problem in this area is the lack of unified assessment tools and criteria of assessment. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (from now on ICF) and its variant The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children (from now on ICF-CY) offer the chance to unify the terminology as well as the content structure of the condition and the assessment of the progress. This also offers a chance of development of assessment tools, teamwork driven quantitative evaluation of the progress of each child and the comparison of the progress between periods of rehabilitation and in the population of the deaf and hard of hearing.
The fundamental goal of this dissertation is the analysis of the usefulness of The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children in the area of communication. The evaluation of the units of communication of the deaf and hard of hearing shows that the assessment tasks based on the model of ICF-CY distinguish between individuals as well as within the individual, which is important for the preparation of an individual rehabilitation program and the evaluation of the progress. As a completion to an already existing method of descriptive evaluation, the assessors show a favourable reception of the model of ICF-CY due to its systematic assessment scheme and a unified basis for defining the degree of the problem. The analysis of the written reports on the assessment of communication on the model of ICF-CY showed a higher content of assessment units with a defined degree.
The results of the research are encouraging mostly for the further development of unified assessment material on the model of ICF-CY regarding all areas relevant for the deaf and hard of hearing and for all age brackets of the deaf and hard of hearing children.
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