Early support for young people with neurodiversity is key to helping them and their families develop crucial skills needed to live a happy, healthy, and successful life. Despite progress in the understanding of neurodiverse conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) there are still cases where young people don’t get diagnosed, don’t meet diagnostic thresholds or experience long waiting times due to high demand. This can cause increased feelings of anxiety, isolation, and frustration within families.
A research project carried out in our Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services designed an intervention for the combined support of schools and families. Families and young people who had experienced these challenges helped design the intervention and the research.
Zach (project lead) notes, "through public participation, I encountered unseen barriers to research, and how sometimes we can "miss the point" and steer research towards mid or low priority issues. With this revelation, I was able to start to draft out a research project ready to start as soon as possible."
To conduct research, it requires a proposal, ethical approval and participation consent and sheets which were created and reviewed by families and young people. Gaining the approval is challenging and there were many barriers to overcome but I found the involvement of families and young people incredibly useful and helped me develop explaining in lay language what the research was.
