Guidance
This guideline covers care and support for adults with cerebral palsy. It aims to improve health and wellbeing, promote access to services and support participation and independent living.
NICE has also produced guidelines on cerebral palsy in under 25s: assessment and management and spasticity in under 19s: management.
Last reviewed: 19 September 2024
We added links to relevant technology appraisal guidance in the section on saliva control. This is to provide easy access to relevant guidance at the right point in the guideline only and is not a change in practice.
Next review: This guidance will be reviewed if there is new evidence that is likely to change the recommendations.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- access to services and ongoing review
- support with communication, vocational skills and independent living, electronic assistive technology and physical activity
- managing spasticity and dystonia
- assessing and monitoring bone and joint disorders, mental health problems, difficulties with eating and nutrition, respiratory disorders and pain
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals in primary and secondary care
- Social care practitioners and professionals from other sectors, such as non-governmental, education and voluntary organisations
- People responsible for planning services, commissioners and providers
- Adults with cerebral palsy, their families and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.