CARE Model Assessment for school-age children who stutter: An overview and preliminary findings

This article details the community-based participatory research development of the CARE Model Assessment instrument, which measures the Blank Center CARE Model’s four primary components: Communication, Advocacy, Resiliency, and Education (CARE). The CARE Assessment instrument is not designed to diagnose stuttering; rather, it assumes an a priori diagnosis and provides a strengths-based evaluation of the four CARE Model components. It is intended for use in individuals diagnosed with stuttering who may receive stuttering-affirming treatment. The CARE Assessment instrument provides an evaluation framework clinicians can use to inform and construct a strengths-based treatment plan. To develop this instrument, the authors conducted two related studies. Study 1 established and refined the initial Assessment tool, resulting in the Revised CARE Assessment instrument (the current version). Subsequently, Study 2 objectively examined the psychometric properties of this revised instrument using a sample of school-age children (N = 107; 8, 17 years of age) and their caregivers (N = 107). This study examined participants’ responses to establish test-retest reliability, divergent validity, and redundancy across the model’s four components. Together, the findings of Studies 1 and 2 provide empirical evidence that the CARE Assessment instrument yields meaningful qualitative and quantitative insights into communication, advocacy, resilience, and knowledge relative to stuttering from the responses of school-age children, their caregivers, and clinicians.