Identifying and choosing goals

The baseline assessments provide visibility into each child’s current skill profile: what they can already do, where they experience friction, and what truly engages them. This includes both skill gaps and areas of strength, as well as interests and challenges in daily contexts.

Not every person needs to learn every possible skill to live a good, self-directed life. Goals, therefore, are not a checklist to “catch up” with a norm, but a set of choices about what will be meaningful, functional, and sustainable for this child in their social and cultural context. When interpreting the baseline, facilitators use a whole-child lens across five developmental domains—physical, cognitive, communication, social-emotional, and adaptive—rooted firmly in the child’s lived reality rather than an abstract template.

Developmental domains for goal-setting

Using domains does not mean putting the child into boxes; it is a way to organise observation and planning so that one area is not overemphasised at the cost of others. A single goal can sit at the intersection of several domains, but listing them separately helps facilitators notice patterns and avoid tunnel vision.

• Physical domain - This includes gross motor skills, fine motor skills, motor planning, coordination, and imitation of actions. Goals here might involve balance, hand use for functional tasks, tool use (like scissors or writing tools), or motor sequences needed for play and daily living.

• Cognitive domain - This covers attention, problem-solving, memory, flexible thinking, symbolic and constructive play, and emerging academic skills such as early reading and math concepts. Goals in this domain are often about helping the child understand patterns, sequences, cause–effect, and concepts that matter to their participation in home and school life.

• Communication domain - This domain includes receptive language (understanding), expressive language (expressing), and functional communication across modalities—speech, sign, gestures, AAC, typing, or any combination that works for the child. Goals might focus on understanding instructions, expressing needs and choices, commenting, asking for help, and participating in back-and-forth interactions in ways that respect the child’s communication style.

Social-emotional domain

This involves emotional education, self-awareness, regulation, attachment, joint attention, and building and maintaining relationships. Goals here might address recognising and naming feelings, using regulation strategies, sharing attention around an activity, participating in play with others, and experiencing a sense of belonging.

Adaptive domain

Adaptive skills are about how the child manages everyday life: activities of daily living (ADLs), self-care, safety, routines, leisure, and independence across environments. Goals might focus on dressing, eating, toileting, personal hygiene, following daily routines, moving safely in the community, and developing leisure skills that are genuinely enjoyable and sustainable for the child.

From baseline to individualised goals

Interpreting the baseline through these domains helps facilitators identify which goals will make the most difference to the child’s participation and quality of life, rather than trying to “fix” every gap. For one child, that may mean prioritising communication and adaptive skills so they can express needs and participate more independently at home and school; for another, social-emotional regulation and leisure skills may be the most urgent because they shape safety and well-being across contexts.

Throughout, the stance remains strengths-based and neuro-affirming: use what the child is already good at, what they love, and how they naturally engage as the anchors for teaching new skills, instead of treating the child as a list of deficits to be remediated.