Additional information for parents and carers
What is HeadSmart?
This website and the HeadSmart materials have been developed to help the public and healthcare professionals to spot the symptoms and signs of brain tumours in children and young people.
Parents are often the first to spot any changes in their child’s health or behaviour. Our experience is that while parents usually spot these changes, they may not know what the symptoms might be caused by and they may not know whether to go to the GP. Our awareness campaign for parents and carers aims to:
- Educate people about the symptoms and signs of childhood brain tumours
- Empower families / carers / young people to seek appropriate healthcare advice (usually visit GP in the first instance).
Information about the symptoms, what to look out for and what to do about them is available from the homepage.
The HeadSmart campaign is also raising awareness of the symptoms among health professionals, and giving them guidance on when to reassure patients and their families, when to review them after a short interval and when to refer them for a brain scan.
Through the campaign, and improved awareness among parents / carers / young people and healthcare professionals, we hope to reduce the time taken to diagnose children with brain tumours.
To read more about the project see the ‘About HeadSmart’ section .
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