Fuse funds film to share impact of Book giving expert advice to help poorly kids

In April 2022 we invited Fuse members linked to our Early Life and Adolescence Programme (ELAP) to apply for a small grant of up to £1,000 to help support impact, dissemination or engagement of research.

Fuse is delighted to have awarded funding to help disseminate research looking at people's experiences of using ‘The Little Orange Book’ (LOB), developed by Newcastle Gateshead Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to provide expert advice on helping babies and young children when they are poorly.

The research forming the basis of the impact and dissemination activity is a service user evaluation led by researchers from Fuse and NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria (NENC), focused on the experiences of parents, grandparents and carers who have used the LOB in Newcastle and Gateshead.

The film will be co-produced with the research team, members of the CCG, local clinicians and importantly, with service users. It is hoped that it will be shared widely through social media and provide a user-friendly way of showcasing the key findings to people who are less likely to read full evaluation reports.

The film will be launched at an event hosted at Northumbria University where key stakeholders, including service users, members of Fuse, Newcastle Gateshead CCG and academics and researchers from the North East will be invited.

Lynette Shotton, Senior Lecturer at Northumbria University, led the winning application on behalf of the research team: Dr Amy Johnson (Northumbria University), Dr Matthew Breckons (Newcastle University) and Kathryn Carruthers (PhD student, Teesside University).

Lynette said: "We are delighted to have been awarded funding from Fuse for this important evaluation project. The funds will help us work with service users and the CCG to share the findings more widely and in a more accessible way and will showcase the impact of the Little Orange Book on helping parents, grandparents and carers of young children manage childhood symptoms.”

All the applications were judged on their own merits, against the Fuse ELAP research strategy and by a small review panel headed by Nicola Heslehurst, Senior Lecturer in Maternal Nutrition at Newcastle University and co-lead of ELAP.

Nicola said: "The review panel had a tough job to decide between the fantastic applications for this funding, which showcased the great work being carried out by Fuse members across the North East and North Cumbria relating to early life and adolescence. We are really excited to see the Little Orange Book research presented in film, and the research team share their work at an in person ELAP event in June 2023."

Our thanks to Nicola and the other panel members: Ruth McGovern, Lecturer in Public Health Research at Newcastle University and ELAP co-lead; Ella Anderson, Fuse Public Involvement and Engagement Manager; Mark Welford, Fuse Communications Manager; and public partner Dani Crispin, Development Manager (Early Years) at Rise North East.

Dani siad: "I really enjoyed being part of the panel as a public partner and it was great to bring my perspective. It was a really difficult decision to make as all the applications were really strong and demonstrated some of the wonderful work going on locally to benefit children and young people. It will be great to see the video about the LOB and the impact it has had." 

About the project

Researchers from Fuse and ARC NENC are working together to evaluate Newcastle Gateshead Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) childhood illness symptom checker ‘The Little Orange Book’ (LOB).   

The LOB was developed by the CCG to help parents and carers of young children to self-manage common childhood symptoms and encourage appropriate use of health services. The CCG were looking for researchers to explore how parents had used the book, whether the LOB had reduced inappropriate Accident and Emergency attendance, and how the LOB could reach even more parents, especially from communities not currently accessing the book.

The CCG approached both ARC NENC and AskFuse, the rapid response and evaluation service run by Fuse. In the spirit of co-operation and to ensure that the Clinical Commissioning Group had access to as wide a field of expertise and capacity as possible, AskFuse developed a brief in collaboration with the CCG, and this was developed and circulated through both ARC and Fuse channels to gather expressions of interest.   

Fuse and ARC researchers from the universities of Northumbria, Newcastle, Sunderland and Teesside worked collaboratively and at great speed to meet the timescale set by the CCG for a fully costed proposal. The evaluation aims to gather experiences of parents, grandparents and carers from Gateshead and Newcastle, explore the impact of the book and how it changed behaviour, identify barriers to using it and explore how the content and format could be improved.  

The proposal was accepted by the CCG, and work started in January 2022.

Last modified: Mon, 25 Jul 2022 09:35:26 BST