Endocrine Abstracts

Background: SEREN is an established, QISMET accredited structured education programme for children/young people (CYP) and their families with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), developed in Wales. The first module ‘Diabetes at diagnosis’ has been in use in Wales since 2016. The resources and health care professional (HCP) training have also been used by some paediatric diabetes teams in England who have since embedded SEREN into their diabetes care. The education is ability banded and the resources are aligned with the school educational key stages. Creating a digital version to complement the face-to-face resources became possible in 2020, following a collaboration with the adult structured education programme BERTIE, which helped to pool resources and create a digital education platform for T1DM from infancy through to adulthood. The digital version of the SEREN face-to-face Diabetes at diagnosis module includes animations, videos and games. Funding from the ‘Accelerate’ programme enabled part of the development work and an evaluation by Cardiff University of the acceptability, initial impact and outcomes of this digital version.

Methods: CYP aged 11–14 years and their parents were recruited via the national diabetes Brecon Group register and contacted by their clinical teams. 11 CYPs took part. They had all been recently diagnosed with Type 1, received face to face education from their clinical teams using SEREN Diabetes at diagnosis (key stage 3) and accessed the digital version. 17 HCPs from across Wales and East Kent, England were also recruited. Semi-structured telephone-based interviews were carried out, recorded, transcribed and analyses conducted using a thematic approach.

Results: Overall CYP and their families and HCPs were positive in their feedback. They described the website as engaging and welcoming and saw it as complementary to the face-to-face resources. Several technical issues were detected and this information was used to improve the website. A Welsh translation is under development and further improvements will be made based on the evaluation. Future plans include extending the digital aspect of the modules to capture different learning styles of CYPs and their families, to ultimately improve self-management of diabetes and the long-term outcomes of T1DM