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The Illness, Complex Health Care Needs and Disability Research Group focuses on exploring and enhancing service delivery through working with children, their families and those who work with them in order to identify how their specific needs can be met and their resilience promoted
Our research has focused particularly on how the lives of children with complex health care and their families can be changed and challenged by the services they are either able to /unable to access. We are interested in how children’s lives can be disrupted by illness and how we can best work with families to mitigate these effects.
Another area of our work addresses children who have disabilities and, in particular, children who use wheelchairs, their opportunities to engage in sport and leisure with their peers and how they gain skills and confidence as children who use wheelchairs.
We also have undertaken service evaluation of mental health services, in schools and children’s centres.
We have undertaken work for the Department of Health closely with Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and the Children’s Nursing Research Unit as well as with colleagues in many other institutions and especially with colleagues within charitable organisations such as WellChild, Rainbow Children’s Charity, CLIC Sargent and The Cheetahs.
We bring a particular methodological expertise to the ways in which we engage with children and their families. We have a long-established reputation for excellent practice when engaging with service users and we draw on a range of sensitive and innovative arts-based methods to ensure that children and young people have the opportunity to contribute their insights, experiences and ideas to our research.
Children’s Nursing Research Unit Conference 7th May 2013 at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
Mandy qualified as a Physiotherapist in 1997 at Manchester School of Physiotherapy and worked in the NHS primarily with adults with complex neurological problems.
She is clinical placement co-ordinator for the Physiotherapy programme and works across the north west with clinical and higher education partners to deliver high quality clinical education. She is interested in children’s acquisition of skills and confidence in using their wheelchairs.
For further information contact:
Prof Bernie Carter
School of Health
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
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