CF in Scotland: SCooP Update

Fresh from speaking at the launch for the Sixty Five Roses Club Scotland, Dr Emma France provides an update on SCooP, the project she is leading to help parents of young children with cystic fibrosis meet their child’s physiotherapy needs. The project is part-funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

I lead the SCooP (Supporting Children’s Physiotherapy for cystic fibrosis) project, an innovative and exciting project involving a team of researchers from across Scotland, England, and even Australia. Supporters of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust helped to name the project byvoting for their favourite title in an online poll. We have been working with 20 families over the past eight months to create a short film for families who have young children with cystic fibrosis from 0 to 8 years old. The film will encourage and support other families to stick to their child’s chest physiotherapy routine.

Home chest physiotherapy is a major part of the daily treatment to clear the lungs and airways of the thick mucus which can lead to infection. Parents, carers and their young children with cystic fibrosis find it difficult to stick to their home physiotherapy routine for a wide range of reasons. But lots of families have come up with their own ways around the problems they have keeping to their child’s physiotherapy routine. For example, parents told us they visualised the build-up and clearance of mucus to motivate themselves. We are drawing on the expertise and experiences of families to develop the film.

We have just finished filming with real families living in Scotland who have a child or children with cystic fibrosis. The film will show the families telling their stories about having a child with CF, doing home chest physiotherapy with them, and showing us some of the solutions that they have found to help them do physiotherapy.

Now we need 20 families from across the UK with children aged between 0–8 with cystic fibrosis to try out the film. See: http://www.stir.ac.uk/scoop/ for more details.

The 20-month SCooP project started in May 2014 and is funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government. Emma France is based at the NMAHP Research Unit, University of Stirling, Scotland.