[Translation and adaptation of the Children with Special Health Care Needs Screener to Brazilian Portuguese].

This study aimed to elaborate the Brazilian version of the Children with Special Health Care Needs Screener to assess internal consistency and inter-observer agreement. The stages included translation, back-translation, expert committee review, and pretest. Participation included 140 family members of children 0-12 years of age at health services in southern Brazil. Reliability was assessed with kappa statistic and Cronbach's alpha. In the assessment of clarity with health professionals, 80% rated the questions very clear. Prevalence of children with special health needs was 36%. Mean time for applying the instrument was 3.5 minutes. The process identified difficulties in understanding question number two. The instrument showed satisfactory internal consistency and perfect agreement. Future research should add to the psychometric analyses of the instrument's adequacy for the Brazilian context, thereby contributing to a standardized definition of this young age group's epidemiological profile within the public health scenario in Brazil.