Activities and participation of children with language disorders in outpatient care according to the ICF

PURPOSE: To identify the main categories of the Activities and Participation component of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health and to verify the association with age, gender, education, and speech therapy diagnosis in children who are assisted by an oral language clinic. METHODS: This is an analytical and cross-sectional observational study, carried out with secondary data from 32 medical records of children with the majority male, mean age of 41.03 months, in early childhood education and language disorder associated with other conditions. The main speech-language pathology manifestations were coded according to the pre-selected categories of the Activities and Participation component, and descriptive and bivariate statistical analyzes were performed, and the Fisher's Exact test was used with a significance level of 5%. RESULTS: The descriptive analysis of the pre-selected categories allowed us to verify a high number of “Not informed” answers, with a higher percentage in vocal expression without speech (d331) performance (93.8%), making decisions (d177) ability (90.6%), problem solving (d175) performance (65.6%) and capacity (87.5%), reception of oral messages (d310) performance (65.6%) and eating (d550) capacity (65.6%). Among the 24 categories selected, 12 jointly contemplated the Qualifiers of Performance and Capacity. There was a statistically significant association between the three categories with sociodemographic data and speech therapy diagnoses. CONCLUSION: Difficulties were identified in several categories of the Activities and Participation component and statistically significant associations between them and sociodemographic data and speech therapy diagnoses, showing the impacts of oral language disorders on the activities and participation of children assisted in an outpatient speech therapy service.