Sibling relationships and visual impairment: investigating their bond with a focus on the role of social play.

Social play has a key role in the development of social skills in child development, especially in early and middle childhood through peer interaction. Siblings serve very often as children's first peers, shaping each other's overall development throughout life. This mixed study investigates the quality of sibling relationships by giving voice to siblings with and without visual impairment, with a focus on the role of social play in their daily lives.

A new interdisciplinary perspective in the design of early evaluation and intervention programs for children with visual impairment.

Vision plays a crucial role in children's early development. Many studies have demonstrated that disturbance of vision affects a child's developmental trajectory, especially if it occurs early in life. The current report introduces an innovative perspective concerning the evaluation of infants and toddlers with visual impairment within a family-centred, interdisciplinary framework.

Autonomy in children and adolescents with visual impairment: Validation of the Visual Impairment Developmental Autonomy scale.

Aim: To validate the Visual Impairment Developmental Autonomy (VIDA) scale, a questionnaire to assess the autonomy level of children with visual impairment.

Method: The primary outcome measures included internal consistency, convergent validity, cross-informant concordance, and descriptive statistics of autonomy profiles across three age groups (age 3-5 years; age 6-10 years; age 11-18 years). Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach's Alpha coefficient.

Quality of life, functioning and participation of children and adolescents with visual impairment: A scoping review.

Background: Vision has a key role in children's neuromotor, cognitive and social development. Children with visual impairment attain developmental milestones at later stages and are at higher risk of developing psychological disorders and social withdrawn.

Aims: We performed a scoping review to summarize the mostly used instruments assessing the impact of visual impairment on quality of life, functioning and participation of children and adolescents.

Hollman Facilitations: A user-friendly tool of supporting children with visual impairment and their families in daily life.

The Robert Hollman Foundation (RHF) designed "Hollman Facilitations" (HF), a user-friendly way of supporting children with visual impairment (VI) and their families on a daily basis. This tool consists of specifically designed pictures on simple A4 sheets, which highlight with images and captions the key aspects of these children's everyday lives. Professionals can easily modify Hollman Facilitations to customize them to the unique developmental needs of every single child with VI and to their individualized strengths and weaknesses.

Parental Satisfaction with the Quality of Care in an Early Intervention Service for Children with Visual Impairment: A Retrospective Longitudinal Study.

The fundamental role of vision during development and the nurturing role of early intersubjectivity have enabled the Robert Hollman Foundation to develop an early intervention program providing holistic support to visually impaired children and their families, where fostering parent-infant interactions is at the heart of our care. The aim of this study is to understand how parents perceive this approach. It is an eleven-year retrospective study of children following the Robert Hollman Foundation's early intervention program, in which parents' ( = 1086) perceptions of quality of care were measured through the administration of a specifically designed 4-point scale questionnaire.

Distance support and online intervention to blind and visually impaired children during the pandemic COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed dramatic changes to everyone's daily routines, but especially to children with developmental disabilities. The Robert Hollman Foundation decided not to interrupt its service to all the visually impaired children and initiated a Distance Support Project. It was an online process covering all aspects of support for the children and involving audio-video calls, videos and tailored-made multisensory material created specifically for each child.

Early onset retinal dystrophies: clinical clues to diagnosis for pediatricians.

Introduction: Inherited retinal dystrophies are major cause of severe progressive vision loss in children. Early recognition and diagnosis are essential for timely visual rehabilitation during the appropriate stages of the visual development, as well as for genetic diagnosis and possible gene therapy. The aim of this study is to characterize a pattern of the initial visual symptoms, which could help the pediatricians and the primary care providers to suspect an inherited retinal disorder in its early stage.