Teaching junior staff about caring for handicapped children.

During the past 10 years the care of children with handicaps has assumed an increasingly important role in paediatric practice. This is reflected in the recent expansion and reorganisation of the community child health services and of training programmes and professional examinations. Caring for families who have a handicapped child entails a delicately balanced partnership between parent, child, and a potentially large multidisciplinary team, including a paediatrician. Within this team the doctor is not necessarily the most important person in terms of the family's perception of their child's care nor in terms of the delivery of that care, which distinguishes it from most other areas of paediatric practice. This paper reviews the important areas of philosophy and practice underlying the training we offer to junior staff in the care of children with long term neurological disabilities.