Application of an Online Screening and Empowerment Program Carried Out at Schools to Identify Children With Specific Learning Disorders

One of the problems faced by health services that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of Specific Learning Disorders (SLD), like Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dysorthography and Dyscalculia, is the long waiting lists for first visits to possible confirm the diagnosis. One of the reasons explaining the long waiting times is that the school refers a large number of children to the hospital services who do not actually have SLD but a simple school difficulty. These two are very different conditions:

• SLD is a neurobiological and genetic-based disorder that, with various degrees of severity, lasts a lifetime. Epidemiological data of the FVG region report a prevalence of dyslexia of 3.1%. Therefore, a prevalence of SLD between 4 and 5% can be assumed. This is a condition whose expressiveness cannot be modified by an enhancement intervention;
• The school difficulties are not innate and are characterized by an initial slowdown in bed-writing learning. The prevalence of low-performance school difficulties is between 10 and 15%. This type of problem improves significantly following specific enhancement.

Resistance to enhancement intervention is precisely one of the criteria that is still used to distinguish a school difficulty from a SLD: students with SLD would be those who show resistance to specific educational interventions. This criterion is based on the assumption that SLD has a precise neurofunctional basis in contrast to school difficulties. These are a transitional condition, which can be modified by didactic adaptations and enhancement activities (Law 170/2010; regional resolution 933/2014 FVG).

The application of enhancement tools in the school environment would therefore make it possible to distinguish, on the basis of the response, subjects with simple school difficulties from those with suspected SLD and, therefore, to report just those one, to the health services for diagnostic confirmation, contributing to the reduction of the workload of the hospital services and the reduction of waiting lists. These results are very important for children with SLD who could be identified and treated in an early and timely manner. The aim of this project is to apply an online screening and further school enhancement process using the "InTempo software" to distinguish children with SLD from those with school difficulties, thus also obtaining data on the real incidence of SLD and school difficulties in The Friuli Venezia Giulia Region.