The BACD–Castang Fellowships 2019/20 were recently awarded. For further information please see: http://www.bacdis.org.uk/research/fellowship.htm

The British Academy of Childhood Disability (BACD) and The Castang Foundation support UK research that includes children with neurodisability and their families. BACD and The Castang Foundation are working together to fund multidisciplinary Fellowships and workshops that will aim to build childhood neurodisability academic capacity.

In 2017/18, 9 Fellows received career development opportunities through the Fellowship workshops. For more information, please see: http://www.bacdis.org.uk/research/2017_18.htm

Meeting held on 19th and 20th March 2015 in Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh.
To view the PDF for this meeting please click here.

Castang Foundation Meeting held on 13 and 14th March 2014 in Edinburgh at the Royal College of Physicians.
This very successful meeting was run by Professor Anne O’hare and Dr Paul Eunson. The first day featured speakers on Harnessing the epidemiology of national cohorts; neonatal imagining and its relationship with neurodevelopmental outcomes; molecular genetics and outcomes; the cascading impacts of cerebral visual impairment. Second day speakers discussed topics including early intervention to optimise motor development; biochemical map of synapse development. Much discussion took place at the end of each day and links are being built between the researchers to develop grant applications and learn from each other’s work and methodologies
To view the PDF for this meeting please click here.

The Royal Society of Medicine (Chandos House) London. The meeting gathered together clinicians working in obstetrics, neonatology and paediatric neurology to exchange ideas and develop new ideas on how to collaborate in further research to protect the fetus and neonate.
To view the PDF for this meeting please click here.

The Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, Scotland UK: The meeting was organised by Professor Anne O’Hare There was been an exponential expansion in the understanding of genetic and neurophysiological contributions to auditory processing and also the importance that cognitive factors such as listening effort, attention, memory and social conditions can play in language development. The programme was designed to capture current progress and to speculate how this might be applied to clinical practice. Areas of further study were identified and it is hoped to hold a follow-up meeting in 2014/15.

The workshop was organised by Professor John Osborne and took place in Bath UK. Participants came from all over the world and the UK to discuss the work being done on Infantile spasms and to discuss the findings from the research into infantile spasms being carried out by Professor Osborne and his team and others.

Held in Vancouver at the Child and Family Research Institute, BC Children’s Hospital, Vancouver, Canada: The workshop was funded jointly by the Castang Foundation and the Family Research Institute, Vancouver, Canada and jointly organised with Professor James Jan. The purpose of the meeting was to promote sleep research relating to children with neurodevelopmental disorders, create a strong collaborative research network and educate other physicians and allied health professionals. Following the meeting Professor Leopold Curfs from Maastricht organised a small research group with two other participants to discuss further research. It is hoped that eventually a book may be published on the findings from the workshop.

Royal Society of Medicine, Chandos House, London. A workshop on the Placenta was held in 2003 and given the exciting advances in work on the placenta this further meeting was held to discuss recent work. As a result of the meeting a book ‘The Placenta and Neurodisability’ is in Press and will be published by The Mac Keith Press in 2013.

The birth of extremely premature infants and all the complications arising from that event presents fundamental challenges to families and the physicians who care for these babies. This workshop dealt in depth with many of the problems such as ‘what are the ethical considerations which underlie decisions? Can what Is known about long-term outcomes in general regarding morbidity be applied to the developmental potential of the individual child? Professionals and parents participated in the workshop all searching for that wisdom that can inform others who care for those who are born too soon.

The meeting held at The Novartis Foundation in London was jointly sponsored by the Castang Foundation and the Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation in the USA. The aim was to produce consensus statements on systematic approaches to evidence based effective treatment in childhood neurodisability. A book ‘Evidence based therapy in childhood neurodisability’ was published by the Castang Foundation in 2012.