FEATURE ASSESSMENT TOOLS
Collaboration and development to introduce a new assessment tool
Patty van Rooij explores the Children ’ s
Cooking Task and describes a collaborative project to develop and embed the tool as an integral part of the occupational therapy assessment process
Assessment of executive functions and planning interventions around the rehabilitation of executive skills is an important focus when working with people with an acquired brain injury . This applies to working with children and young people with an acquired brain injury as well as adults .
The Children ’ s Cooking Task is a tool that was developed in France in response to the lack of existing occupational focused / ecologically valid assessment tools for children and young people with an acquired brain injury .
Based on the Cooking Task , which was initially developed for adults with an acquired brain injury , it was adapted several years later into the Children ’ s Cooking Task ( Poncet et al 2015 ; Poncet et al 2017 ; Chevignard et al 2010 ).
It is a standardised assessment tool , which requires a young person to complete two set tasks in the kitchen ( a chocolate cake and a fruit cocktail ). It provides a score system , which identifies task performance and a specific neuropsychological profile .
The assessment provides ‘ real life ’ information regarding a young person ’ s occupational performance on a task that demands the use of a variety of executive skills .
Service development The Cambridge Centre for Paediatric Neuropsychological Rehabilitation ( CCPNR ) in Cambridge is a community based , tertiary service that consists of an inter-disciplinary team of psychologists , speech and language therapists and an occupational therapist .
Neuropsychological rehabilitation incorporates the relationship between behaviour , emotion , and cognition on the one hand , and brain function on the other .
Within the CCPNR , inter-disciplinary formulation of the young person ’ s strengths and weaker areas is a central part of how the service works . The professionals work
collaboratively with each other and with the young person and their family , in order to provide this holistic picture , based on the ICF ( International Classification of Function ) model .
The assessments performed by the different professionals within the team complement each other , and as the occupational therapist in the team I contribute an occupational performance perspective to the picture .
Due to a lack of young people-focused acquired brain injury-specific assessments available for occupational therapy within the service , I recognised a need for service development within this area .
Collaboration My psychology colleagues made me aware of Dr Mathilde Chevignard ’ s work on the Children ’ s Cooking Task ( Chevignard et al 2010 ; Chevignard et at 2012 ), and we decided to further investigate this .
We also sought collaboration with occupational therapists and psychologists from other specialist services for children with an acquired brain injury , with whom we had already developed a close working relationship , including The Children ’ s Trust at Tadworth , The Brainbow Service for children with brain tumours in Cambridge , and the Cambridge Centre for Paediatric Neuropsychological Rehabilitation ( CCPNR ) in Cambridge .
We decided to come together and examine the use of the Children ’ s Cooking Task within our respective services , to establish its usefulness and practicality in assessing the occupational performance of children and young people with an acquired brain injury in a real life activity .
International collaboration I contacted Mathilde and we established email correspondence over the assessment tool , the stage of its
© Thais Ceneviva via Getty Images
44 OTnews October 2021