Assistive technologies for children with cognitive and/or motor disabilities: interviews as a means to diagnose the training needs of informal caregivers.

The present paper highlights the fact that carrying out interviews with informal caregivers leads to obtaining significant data for a diagnosis of the use of assistive technologies in the family setting and to assess the needs of informal caregivers. From this study, the need to provide caregivers with further training on assistive technologies emerges as preponderant, and to improve caregivers' skills in the search for and access to practical information.Implication for RehabilitationCognitive and/or motor disabilities impact on communication, independence and also on the full inclusion of children, especially when efforts developed at school do not have any follow up at home.Endowing informal caregivers with the knowledge and skills to use assistive devices with their children is a step forward to their full development.Interviews conducted with informal caregivers are a means to gaining insights into understanding the reasons behind assistive technology abandonment at home.