Blog about The Children’s Trust’s Research Day 2018
The Children’s Trust research day is always an exciting day of celebrating the research progress of the last year, and providing inspiration for the next year of work! The 2018 day, on 23rd October, was no different. Entitled ‘finding stuff out’ to complement the later quality day ‘making stuff better’ the day showcased the research projects the clinical and research teams at The Children’s Trust have been working on, along with inspiring key note talks from two external professionals.
Kate Oulten, nurse research from Great Ormond Street, shared her research project called ‘pay more attention’, a national study that is identifying the facilitators and barriers that children, young people and families experience in accessing high quality health care. Her talk, sharing experiences of both staff and families, focused on the difficulties that young people with learning difficulties face when admitted to hospital. One key message from her talk was that the ‘little things’ that are important to the individual, such as an important routine, favourite toy or appropriate communication, can be essential to the young person during a stressful hospital admission.
A second invited speaker, Emma Clee, spoke of her journey on the NIHR clinical academic pathway. She openly shared her highs and lows, accomplishments and frustrations and it was great to hear, how, despite the challenges, she was successfully progressing along her career in this field.
The rest of the day celebrated the research work of children’s Trust professionals over the past year. Mel Burroughs presented on her masters dissertation around using the PREP model with children with ABI, demonstrating how it this model of facilitating children and young people to participate in activities could be successful, with some unique challenges.
Gemma Costello shared the work of student John Etty, who has developed a brain injury education resource for children and young people with ABI, through a study that has interviewed several of the young people at The Children’s Trust.
Kathy Davis presented a review of outcome data for children on rehabilitation programmes who sustained strokes, showing that although significant progress was made, children were discharged with ongoing needs.
Karen Cundy and Gemma Kelly then presented on projects that had looked at the high level communication and physical needs of children with ABI, clearly demonstrating that these ‘hidden’ needs can affect all areas of children’s participation.
Finally Jonathan Pool, and Gemma Kelly presented on their study looking at the use of rhythm to help children and young people when relearning to walk, an intervention that looks promising in this population.
To top it all off, lunchtime gave the opportunity for everyone to view the 16 posters displaying the work of clinical teams across the organisation, all of which had been presented at conferences throughout the year.
The whole day had a really positive atmosphere with the sharing of the diverse projects undertaken in the past year, and inspiring the new projects for 2019!
Blog about The Children’s Trust’s Quality Day 2018
The Children’s Trust hosted their first annual Quality Day on 6th November 2018. Entitled ‘Making Stuff Better’, the inaugural Quality Day was the partner study day to the 2018 Research Day (‘Finding Stuff Out’), with both showcasing the fantastic quality improvement work and research projects that had been carried out over the previous year.
Maggie Clancy, Director of Children’s Services, welcomed attendees to the day, and Helena D’Angelo and Tim Grove jointly presented the results of their recently completed masters’ dissertations, that both related to implementing quality and the role of transformational leadership within this and how this influenced positive change within the organisation.
Tai Frater, from Brunel University, presented on the ‘My Health, My Voice’ project which was carried out with the parents and staff at The Children’s Trust. Her findings discussed how to improve the involvement and participation of children and young people (CYP) and their families in making evidence-informed decisions regarding their care.
The stream on ‘Service Improvement’ included Dr Kathy Davis and Tim Grove feedback on the development and implementation of a nursing and care acuity tool to assure regulators of how the organisation plans staffing, and the difficulties in creating a measurement tool across such varied residential services.
Emily Frost updated attendees on the ‘Wake Up’ groups that have been implemented across the houses. The Children’s Trust School nurse team discussed their award winning health promotion project for CYP with profound and complex disabilities.
Steve Nash and Sharon Evans, from the social work team, presented on the implementation of the ‘Youth and Participation Strategy’ work which has begun to embed the voice of the service users across the whole of The Children’s Trust.
After lunch, the stream on ‘Service Evaluations and Dataset’s’ began with Katy James, Head of Brain Injury Community Service, presenting the results of the whole service evaluation of the community provisions, and updated on how through scrutinising the service provision and making changes, this having a positive effect for the families they support.
Emily Frost described how through introducing a multi-tiered approach, The Children’s Trust School team were able to promote participation in school occupations for CYP with profound and multiple learning disabilities.
Following this, Gemma Kelly (on behalf on Debbie Wilkinson) demonstrated the improvements made by children and young people with an acquired brain injury through the ‘Therapy Outcomes Measures’ (TOMs) routinely collected by the Speech and Language Therapists. The results highlighted the range of needs of CYP following a brain injury as well as the significant changes this group made in their TOMs outcomes.
To finish the day, the social work team updated the attendees on the progress of the collaborative work with Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Canada in how to best support the needs of the family through the Family Needs Questionnaire (FNQ), and through implementing this at The Children’s Trust, identifying the positive impact on discharge planning this has had for some placements.
Overall, the first annual Quality Day was considered a great success by both the attendees and organisers, and work is ongoing to build on quality improvement projects for teams across The Children’s Trust.
The progress of these will be showcased in late-2019.
Blog about The Children’s Trust’s Research Day 2017
The Children’s Trust Research day was a busy and exciting day full of presentations from staff members from across the organisation, and external colleagues.
Dr Anne Gordon started with a key note lecture on the unmet needs of children who had sustained stroke. There were some scary statistics, such as 86% of these children struggle to access public transport.
We heard updates about projects from our external colleagues such as the use of games like connect 4 for neuro-psychological testing, the visual difficulties of children with ABI, and how parents experience the ups and downs of rehabilitation. This was particularly powerful with parents having shared the devastation they felt the first time their child was hoisted to the chair.Members of all therapy teams, nursing teams and quality assurance presented updates of projects from across site.
Many service development projects aimed at improving the experiences of children with either ABI or profound and multiple learning difficulties were shared.
Research projects looking at leadership at The Children’s Trust, outcomes of rehabilitation and the development of new assessment tools and interventions were discussed, as well as the exciting new research projects that are beginning in the school.
An overview of an evaluation of Brain Injury Community Service was also presented.There will be an exciting year ahead with all of these projects and more developing, and we look forward to hearing updates at next year’s research day!
The Children’s Trust Research Governance Committee Progress Report 2021
