Home or children's treatment centre: where should initial therapy assessments of children with disabilities be done?

Following developmental paediatric consultation at a child development clinic, 50 preschool children newly referred for a developmental rehabilitation programme were assigned randomly for initial therapist assessments at home or at the clinic. It was thought that children would perform more typically at home, that therapists would be able to observe more of the children's usual functions, and that parents would feel more satisfied. Despite several minor statistically significant differences between the two venues, there was no obvious advantage of home evaluation over clinic assessment. However, the added cost of home assessments was marginal, and there may still be some value in seeing young disabled children for first assessment in their own homes.