Children with co-ordination difficulties' experiences of the CO-OP
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Children with motor co-ordination difficulties' experiences of participating in the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) intervention.
IRAS ID
300590
Contact name
Mark Tudge
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Brighton
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 1 days
Research summary
Children's occupational therapy services across the UK offer assessment and intervention pathways for children with co-ordination difficulties. The Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) is a recommended occupational therapy intervention for children with developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD). The goal of CO-OP is to help children to tackle everyday tasks such as doing up buttons, riding a bike and handwriting. The intervention involves therapists helping children to understand challenging tasks as problems to be solved. It uses a framework of breaking problems down to ‘Goal Plan Do Check’. This strategy encourages children to stop and think through what they are planning to do and reflect on how they have performed. The approach has evolved from 10-12 one-to-one sessions to 10-20 group sessions.
Although there is good quantitative evidence that the CO-OP makes a measurable difference, qualitative research with children involved in the CO-OP is limited. This is a serious gap in the research.
Therefore, the overall aim of this study will be to investigate children’s lived experience of the CO-OP intervention to hear the child’s voice. This has the potential to help professionals and academics in delivering or revising the intervention. It will also allow future children to understand in more depth what they are being offered by professionals.
It is hoped eight children will participate in semi-structured interviews. They will be in the 7- to 11-year-old age range. NHS Children’s Occupational Therapy Services who use the CO-OP will be asked to help with recruitment. Each participant will take part in 3 interviews with the researcher.
The research is a self-funded PhD student project.REC name
South West - Cornwall & Plymouth Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/SW/0056
Date of REC Opinion
25 Apr 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion