Key issues that will be covered:

• The behaviours, signs or symptoms that should prompt healthcare, education and social care professionals and others working with children and young people, to consider the presence of a conduct disorder.
• Validity, specificity and reliability of the components of diagnostic assessment after referral, including: the structure for assessment; diagnostic thresholds; assessment of risk
• Psychosocial interventions, including: individual and group psychological interventions; parenting and family interventions (including family-based prevention models); social care (including interventions for looked after children and young people), vocational, educational and community
  interventions, and work with peer groups multi-modal interventions.
• Pharmacological interventions, including antipsychotics and antidepressants. Note that guideline recommendations will normally fall within licensed indications; exceptionally, and only if clearly supported by evidence, use outside a licensed indication may be recommended. The guideline will assume that prescribers will use a drug’s summary of product characteristics to inform decisions made with individual patients.
• Physical interventions, such as diet.
• The organisation, coordination and delivery of care, and care pathways for the components of treatment and management. This will include transition planning and will be based on an ethos of multi-agency and multi-professional working.

Issues that will not be covered:

• Specific interventions for sexually abused or traumatised children and young people.
• Specific interventions for children and young people with speech and language difficulties.
• Preventive interventions for the general population.
• Setting-based interventions (for example, school-based interventions) for those who are not at significant risk of developing a conduct disorder.