CHESS (CHildren’s Early Self-care Support) is a large national study.
It focuses on young children aged 12 months to 4 years 6 months.
It evaluates the impact of NHS therapy on children’s development, personal care and independence – as well as on parent wellbeing.
We want to help all young children reach their full potential. Parents and children have told us they want better support for young children’s personal care and independence – for young children to do things for themselves and to have a say in things that affect them.
Early years is one of the most important times for laying strong foundations for the future. Parents want NHS therapists to pay more attention to personal care in young children, including with children with complex needs.
CHESS is a focused way to support self-care of disabled young children with diverse conditions and difficulties.
Self-care is about children doing everyday tasks to look after themselves and making or being involved in decisions about these tasks with the support of their parents or carers.
This research has been designed together by parents, young people, experienced therapists, and independent researchers.
Parents and young people decided which outcomes the research should focus on. They also helped to design the CHESS therapy approach.
The research plan was reviewed for funding by an independent national panel at the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and by an NHS Research Ethics Committee (Ref: 24/NE/0162, IRAS 331267).
NHS services are taking part
Forty NHS therapy services across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are taking part. They are working with parent organisations and independent researchers. Service will be allocated randomly to provide one of two treatment approaches. All therapist in the local service will then use that approach, and all children in the service will receive that approach. Importantly, this does not involve randomly allocating individual children or parents to treatments.
Parents providing information
The most important measure of therapy is whether it helps the child in everyday life. We will invite parents to complete questionnaires and share information, confidentially, to help us assess this.
Seeking to improve treatments
The information from parents and services will help us to compare the benefits of the two therapy approaches. Once we know the benefits, this information can be used to help improve treatments for young children across the country.
If you are an NHS site and interested in learning more about potentially becoming part of the CHESS trial, find out more here
Funding acknowledgement
This project is funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (HTA) programme (reference NIHR156487). It is led from Newcastle University, with Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust as Sponsor and the Centre for Healthcare Randomised Controlled Trials (CHaRT) in Aberdeen as the trials Unit. The other partners are Northumbria University, Bangor University, PenCRU at University of Exeter, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines, and Newcastle Hospitals. . The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is the Sponsor for the study and takes overall responsibility for the management of the study. Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is also the data controller for this study and is responsible for looking after participant information, using it properly and complying with participants’ rights. You can find more about this at https://www.sheffieldchildrens.nhs.uk/your-information/ or by contacting us at [chess@abdn.ac.uk].