EPIC-CP: Equitable Pathways for Cerebral Palsy

EPIC-CP is a co-designed research project focused on developing a social care navigation pathway for children and young people with cerebral palsy and their families. The project responds to growing evidence that unmet social needs can have a major impact on health, wellbeing and access to care.

The challenge

Children with cerebral palsy, particularly those experiencing disadvantage, often face significant barriers to engaging with complex and fragmented health and social care systems. Despite evidence that addressing these needs improves outcomes, social care navigation had not been trialled for children with cerebral palsy in the Australian context.

Our approach

Co-design methodology to develop a social care navigation pathway with children and young people with cerebral palsy, their caregivers and service providers across three tertiary paediatric rehabilitation services in NSW. The pathway includes clinicians using an adapted social determinants screening tool and linking families to relevant supports through a social care navigator. Uses inclusive qualitative methods including interviews, focus groups and arts-based approaches.

Key goals

• Co-design a social care navigation pathway for children with cerebral palsy and their families.

• Better understand the unmet social needs experienced by families.

• Identify barriers and enablers to integrating social care navigation within paediatric rehabilitation services.

• Strengthen family-centred, responsive care by linking health with social and community supports.

• Generate evidence to inform the next phase of testing and future scale-up.

Evaluation & impact

Primary outcome is the development of a co-designed and co-developed social care navigation pathway, EPIC-CP. Secondary outcomes include a deeper understanding of unmet social needs and the factors that help or hinder integration of social care navigation into current health services.