iSupport’s Rights-based Standards Checklist is designed to help health professionals ensure that every child’s rights and wellbeing are respected during health care interactions.
The tool aims to help support professionals and teams to briefly pause, check and agree key steps before a child’s test, treatment or examination. The iSupport checklist aims to strengthen communication, enhance teamwork, and reduce preventable harm and distress.
Lucy Bray, Professor of Child Health Literacy and iSupport lead, said: “Our work has shown that children can experience avoidable upset and distress when having tests, treatments and examinations.
“They can learn to fear procedures and develop trauma. There is still a gap in how techniques such as developing connection and trust, preparing children and using distraction are used in practice.
“The Checklist is there to help healthcare professionals pause and plan and avoid using methods like restraint with distressed children”
iSupport is now inviting healthcare professionals and organisations to use the new checklist in their workplaces to translate the rights-based standards into everyday practice.
The small, credit card-sized checklist, which can be easily carried on a lanyard, features nine core statements based on the iSupport Rights-Based Standards:
iSupport is honoured to work with hospital trusts in England, Southern Ireland and internationally. Local staff in Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust, Ormskirk Hospital were the first teams to receive the new checklists and lanyards.
Professor Bray added: “In busy healthcare settings, even the most experienced professionals face intense time pressures and complex demands.
“Research across safety and quality initiatives shows that brief, structured check-ins, when teams briefly pause to agree on key steps can strengthen communication, enhance teamwork and reduce preventable harm to patients.
“The iSupport Checklist is designed to facilitate these critical moments, to give busy staff the permission to pause and agree a procedural plan before proceeding.”
iSupport is an international collaboration, comprising a team of 50 professionals and experts across 16 countries. The core mission is to ensure that a child’s short and long-term physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing are central to all decisions about healthcare procedures.
The iSupport website provides free resources for families and professionals to learn how to support children through procedures including a prep sheet for children and case studies to show how the standards look in practice.
https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/departments/academic/health/nursing-and-midwifery/nursing/Edge Hill University offers a range of nursing course all approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, in areas such as adult, child, learning disabilities and mental health nursing.
November 20, 2025
