Welcome to Children’s Hand Skills Assessment Hub

This Assessment Hub presents a set of instruments designed to measure children’s hand skills specifically. Using the hands to perform functional activities is vital for children’s participation in daily life. Occupational therapists and physiotherapists often assess outcomes related to children’s hand use or fine motor skills. This is important to guide intervention planning and evaluate progress.

Three instruments are now available in this Assessment Hub. They are designed to measure children’s hand use at Activities and Participation component, based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) proposed by the World Health Organisation. In the ICF, activities are defined as the execution of a task or action by an individual, and participation is defined by involvement in a life situation.

 

Instruments and their relation to the ICF


Children’s Hand-Skills ability Questionnaire (CHSQ) is to measure manual ability which is referred to as the capacity to manage daily activities requiring the use of the hands.

Assessment of Children’s Hand Skills (ACHS) is to measure real-life hand skill performance which is referred to as the use of the hands while performing meaningful activities within natural contexts. 

Children’s Assessment of Participation with Hands (CAP-Hand) is to specifically measure hand-use life participation which is referred as to engagement in life situations that require hand use.


 

Acknowledgements


The instruments included in this Assessment Hub are developed with the assistance of several sources of financial support. These supports include PhD scholarships from Monash University and a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from The University of Queensland. The authors (including Dr Chi-Wen Chien, Associate Professor Ted Brown, Dr Rachael McDonald, Professor Sylvia Rodger and Dr Jodie Copley) also would like to thank all of the content experts for their contributions to the development of these instruments. All families and children who participated in these development and validation studies are also acknowledged.