Youth worker feasibility in young adult diabetes service
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Is the implementation of a youth worker in young adult diabetes’ services in North Wales feasible?
IRAS ID
309953
Contact name
Rose Stewart
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 28 days
Research summary
The provision of youth workers in young adult diabetes services is recommended in the ‘All Wales Standard for People Moving from Paediatric to Adult Diabetes Service’. Wrexham young adult diabetes team have implemented 0.8 of a youth worker for 12 months at Wrexham Maelor Hospital (WMH) with the aim to: 1) deliver face-to-face or virtual youth work to Wrexham’s young adult diabetes service patients, 2) lead on setting up and delivering the SEREN Connect course across the health board, 3) establish a young adult with diabetes advisory service across the health board, 4) develop the use of Digibeat across the health board, 5) set up a peer support service for young adults with T1D across the health board. Several questionnaires measuring a number of different outcomes are being collected at the beginning and the end of the youth workers one-to-one interventions with participants, as well as some standard diabetes related medical data. Further data regarding other elements of the project will also be recorded, such as the number of SEREN connect groups ran throughout the project and the number of patients using DigiBete. All of this data will be collected as part of a standard service from the youth worker and the young adult diabetes team. This data will contribute to a service evaluation of the implementation of the youth worker. However, we believe this data could be generalisable and transferable to a wider setting. Therefore, the standard data collected as part of this pilot intervention will be used for a data research project. Publication of this research/data from this pilot project could support other young adult diabetes services across Wales and the UK to expand their service provision and apply for funding of a youth worker, as guidance recommends.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Leeds West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/YH/0169
Date of REC Opinion
24 Aug 2022
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion