Sparkle had excellent representation at a national conference recently, with three pieces of research being accepted for presentation at the Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health annual conference in Liverpool.

On Wednesday 29^th June, our Research and Development Officer, Bethan Collins, attended the conference to present findings of a recent evaluation of Aneurin Bevan University Health Board’s Care Coordination service. Bethan also had two virtual ‘poster’ presentations at the conference, one on an evaluation of our Family Liaison Service and the other on the ‘Design a Children’s Centre’ competition we held in North Gwent last year to gain the views of children with disabilities on the services and facilities they wanted to access.

“There was a lot of interest in health inequalities, child participation, and integrated and coordinated care for children at the conference, so our work seemed to fit perfectly,” said Bethan. “It was fantastic to present our findings and discuss the services offered by the children’s centres in Gwent with professionals from other parts of Wales and across the UK, however it was clear from conversations that more needs to be done to provide all children in the UK with access to coordinated care and with opportunities to have their voices heard in relation to health services and research.”

The conference brings together more than 1,500 professionals from paediatrics and related fields; therefore, this was an excellent opportunity for Sparkle to share our learnings and inform others from across the UK of the ground-breaking work we’re doing in South Wales.

Find out more about our research and evaluation work here: https://www.sparkleappeal.org/research