Risk factors of children who exited from an early intervention program without an identified disability and returned with a developmental disability

A retrospective cohort study was undertaken to identify risk factors for children at greatest risk of delayed diagnosis of developmental disability. Two thousand four hundred and thirty-nine children were selected for this study due to their participation in the California Early Start (ES) Program in 1998. Comparisons were made among children that had no break in services offered through the ES Program versus children that returned with a disability after exiting the ES Program. Factors examined include child's condition and qualifying risk factors, mother's demographic characteristics, family's risk factors, and risk scores developed for each county in which the family resided. Children with a delay in diagnosis of a disability have characteristics that fall outside the norm for the identification of a disability. It is not clear if this is related to age-specific manifestation to the appearance of a disability or to conditions difficult to diagnose.