Developmental Journal Babies Visual Impairment (DJVI) OFFICIAL

OFFICIAL The Developmental Journal for babies and young children with visual impairment (DJVI) early intervention materials for professional use with babies and young children with visual impairment and their families. This is intended for licensed usage by healthcare professionals and related specialists. It replaces all previous unlicensed versions of the Developmental Journal which have been available and in circulation. 

Early vision and general development is vulnerable in children with visual impairment in the early years. Early intervention is critical for ensuring optimal visual and developmental progress. The Developmental Journal for babies and young children was developed by clinicians and clinical researchers from the Developmental Vision Programme at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust and UCL Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health (main authors Dr Alison Salt and Dr Naomi Dale). In 2005 it was commissioned by the English central government to be disseminated as the national early intervention framework for children with visual impairment and their families and has been scientifically proven for effectiveness in 2019 (Dale et al., 2019).

The DJVI is a systematic framework tracking developmental and vision progress from birth to three years of age (or equivalent developmental age). It aims to:

• help parents and practitioners track and understand the child’s achievements, progress and development;
• support goal setting and guidance to promote vision and general development;
• support interdisciplinary and interagency working;
• support information sharing between parents and the practitioners they meet;
• identify areas of difficulty early where more help would be useful.

Who is this for?

The DJVI is designed to be used, in partnership with parents, by qualified clinicians and specialist professionals working in services providing support to babies and young children with visual impairment and their parents.

Licensed usage

The licence fee offers 10 licence ‘seats’. This means one licence gives an organisation rights for a maximum of 10 practitioners to use the DJVI. Any organisation requiring more licence seats will need to purchase additional licences in proportion to the number of seats required.

The applicant for license requires an institutional email address. The license provides access for the named license holder to the digital version of the DJVI and its usage. The license holder may download a full copy of the DJVI for the parent under their care for ‘partnership’ usage only. At the end of this period of care, the parent is permitted to retain their own copy of the Developmental Journal booklets and Vision Record only as their child’s record. The parent is not permitted to photocopy or give the DJVI materials or Journal booklets to any other party. (Refer to license for conditions of usage).

Parents should contact their local visual impairment services for further information about how they can access support. They can also access additional information about services for children with visual impairment at http://www.rnib.org.uk/parentsguide.

This version of the DJVI is the most up to date. The second edition of the DJVI is coming later in the year; all license holders will receive the second edition materials automatically and will be informed of their availability under their licence arrangements.

What it includes

The DJVI package includes:

User Manual

Introduction: Describes how to use the DJVI

General overview of development: Explains the principles of development in babies and young children with visual impairment

Getting Stuck?: Practical suggestions to help with behaviours and aspects of development that may be causing difficulty for young children with visual impairment

Booklets

Developmental journal booklets: Stages 1a – 5 are for tracking and recording development in all areas: Social and emotional development; Communication, language and meaning; Play and learning; Movement and mobility; Towards independent self-care.

Activity cards:  Stages 1a – 5 provides practical suggestions about how to help a child move forward to the next developmental steps

Developmental profile: Provides a summary of a child’s progress and how it changes across all areas of development

Summary records: Provides a summary of all themes and individual steps across all areas. Recording of progress and goal setting can be updated and maintained by the practitioner for their records.

Vision record and activity cards

Record of developing vision: A record for tracking the progress of functional vision development Developing vision activity cards: Practical suggestions for how to promote vision development

Visual environment and visual materials cards: Suggestions to guide the choice of toys and objects to suit a child’s current vision and need

Education and training for users

Before using the DJVI it is strongly recommended that the licence holder undertakes the on-line training course - Developmental Journal Visual Impairment Part 1 and 2. This permits the licence holder to have the underlying knowledge of relevant developmental principles and techniques to ensure safe and effective intervention.

This is available through the Health Education England/ Royal College of Paediatric Child Health e-learning for healthcare Healthy Child Programme - Early Developmental Support training course. https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/early-developmental-support/

If you are a member of the NHS, you can register through the NHS portal. If you are not a member of the NHS you can register through the integrity portal.

Other training packages relevant to the use of the Developmental Journal are also available on this training portal.

Next stage

A national scientific investigation of its effectiveness has been completed (OPTIMUM project) and a second edition, including new aspects arising from the OPTIMUM project, will be available in the future.

DOI: 10.5522/03/DJVI_PROF

Creators:

Dale, Naomi
Salt, Alison

Title: Developmental Journal Visual Impairment - PROFESSIONAL SET

Publisher: UCLB

Year of publication: 2018

DOI Dataset: The dataset contains folders with DJVI materials:

1. User Manuals.zip
2. Developmental Journal Booklets.zip
3. Activity Cards.zip
4. Vision Record and Activity Cards.zip