Young people's needs of a Sickle Cell Diagnosis in education v1

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Young people's experiences of being supported with a Sickle Cell Diagnosis within their educational setting.

  • IRAS ID

    353741

  • Contact name

    Megan Maidment

  • Contact email

    m.maidment@herts.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    University of Hertfordshire

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    1 years, 2 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    The present study will aim to explore young people's experiences of being supported with a Sickle Cell Diagnosis within their educational setting. Understanding their experiences will open up avenues for further discussions and possible implementations of how to better support young people within education or other areas of their lives. The proposed project will be a qualitative study using semi structured interviews. This study will aim for a sample size of 4-10 participants with a Sickle Cell Diagnosis and in full time education e.g. mainstream or a special school between the ages of 10-16. Full time education refers to studying for 22-25 hours per week for 38 weeks across the year. Participants will be excluded if they do not have a Sickle Cell diagnosis, are not in full time education (either mainstream or special school), are home schooled or are having a Sickle Cell crisis. Participants will be invited to semi-structured interviews which will include prompts with the aim of understanding their narratives of their experience of Sickle Cell Diagnosis in education, whether they feel supported, listened to or heard and what would be valuable for them. Interviews will be transcribed and the data analysis will use an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis using NVivo. This research will be conducted across the following two sites - Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust. This research hopes to be conducted across non-NHS sites too e.g. Sickle Cell charities or support groups. This study will last for 6 months.

  • REC name

    Wales REC 7

  • REC reference

    25/WA/0274

  • Date of REC Opinion

    5 Sep 2025

  • REC opinion

    Unfavourable Opinion