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Motor Disorders

Checked: 23-08-2023 by Vicky Ryan Next Review: 23-08-2025

Overview

Motor disorders result when a child has difficulties with movement or posture often caused by a disorder of the brain, spinal cord, nerves or muscles. The child may be late with their motor milestones (for example not sitting aged one year, not walking aged 18 months) or they may have high or low muscle tone.

Our child development and neurodisability team have expertise in the assessment, diagnosis and management of motor disorders. The team may include a neurodisability paediatrician, physiotherapist, occupational therapist and a speech and language therapist. The team takes a multidisciplinary approach to assessment and treatment of the child. This support is led by the community paediatrician and will depends on the severity of the disorder.

Who to refer

Children with impaired/delayed motor development or disordered motor skills.
Children with abnormal neurological examinations.
Children with risk factors for motor disorders, for example children born prematurely or those with a likely genetic disorder.

Referral

Referrals for specialist support can be made by health visitors (pre-school), school health nurses and GPs.

If you wish, you can make a referral to the team using the Single Point of Entry form. This should also be available as an EMIS template

Resources

The documents below provide more details about care pathways for children and young people with different motor difficulty conditions.

Motor Disorders including Cerebral Palsy Care Pathway

Hip Surveillance Guidelines for Children with Cerebral Palsy for consultation

Clinical Guideline Oral Baclofen for Spasticity Management in Children and Young People

NICE guidelines for Cerebral palsy in under 25s

Clinical Guideline Diazepam for Spasticity Management in Children and Young People

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.