Evaluating co-design of physical activity resources with regional children, parents and others.

Background and aims
Co-designing with end-users is recognised as one way of increasing health equity and literacy. Engaging end-users in co-designing health resources is also established as an important method to ensure health resources are suitable for the populations they are targeting. Children who are neuro or developmentally diverse may require regular input from healthcare workers but co-design
approaches for development of health resources with children have tended to focus upon older, neurotypical children or adolescents. The aim of this study was to evaluate our co-design approach for development of physical activity resources with regional children, who had been identified as neuro and developmentally diverse, and their parents.

Methods
Regional primary school-aged children, who had been identified by their paediatrician as neuro or developmentally diverse, and their parents, were invited to take part in several co-design workshops. The first two workshops were completed with children and parents from individual families together, followed by separate child and parent workshops. In addition, child and adult advisory groups oversaw the project, meeting three times each. These groups monitored and provided advice on the co-design approach.
They reviewed and provided feedback on initial analysis of changes made to resources as a result of child or parent advice. A primary-school learning support officer was recruited as a child advocate. The child advocate facilitated each child advisory group. They also attended adult advisory groups as spokesperson for the child advisory group. The child advocate reported back from the adult group to the child group via their parents emails. All children and parents who took part in the last phase of workshops, and
non-researchers from the adult advisory group were invited to take part in evaluating our co-design approach via short surveys.

Results or expected outcomes
Key findings from children’s, parents’ and adult advisory group members’ evaluations will be presented. Overall, the evaluators perceived the co-design approach to be appropriate, responsive and effective. Key facilitators and challenges of our approach will also be highlighted during the presentation.

Implications or Conclusions
Evaluating co-design approaches is an important way to provide greater transparency of the processes involved and protect consumers against tokenistic co-design approaches. Future studies could consider developing ways they can embed short continuous evaluation into their co-design approach as it would provide greater opportunities to adapt their approach based upon
co-designer feedback and ensure that insights are gained from greater numbers of co-designers.