What does the study involve?

If you decide you would like your child to take part, a member of the study team will ask you to complete:

A consent form. Older children/adolescents will also be asked to complete an assent form. This shows that they also give their permission.
A contact information form so we can contact you about your child’s recovery.
A questionnaire about pain, activities and feelings, and very brief information about your child’s medical history. This should take about 5-10 minutes to fill in.

We will then allocate your child fairly to one of the two treatment groups in the study. The doctors and nurses will then begin treatment.

During your child’s recovery, we will have brief contact with you by text message and/or email on four further occasions (Week 6, Month 3, Month 6, Year 1). We will ask questions about pain, activities, feelings, hospital attendances, school attendance and costs that you may have incurred in relation to this injury (i.e. days absent from work etc).

It is important that you try and complete the questionnaires with your child as soon as possible after they are received. We will use a small image in any e-mails that we send to you to let us know when you have opened the e-mail. We will use this information so that we can improve the timing of sending you and other participants information about your participation in this study. If the questionnaire is not completed, we will give you a reminder after a few days (by phone, text or e-mail based on your preference). If it is not completed after 1 week, or if we have any queries about the information you have already provided, we may contact you to ask the questions over the telephone or by email/text.

We are able to offer a $50 gift voucher at the end of the first year as compensation for any costs (i.e. mobile phone data) incurred whilst completing the questionnaires.

Information will be transferred to the University of Oxford, where it will be stored securely.