Anne-Sophie Darlington

Professor of Child and Family Psychological Health

Professor Darlington’s research programme focuses on measuring and improving Quality of Life (QoL) of children and young people with a chronic illness. Her work focuses on coping strategies and developing and testing interventions to support parents and children.

She has developed a strong international track record in research on predictors of adjustment (e.g. coping), Patient Reported Outcome Measurement, intervention development and Paediatric Palliative Care, focusing on understanding how parents cope when faced with their child’s imminent death and how we can best support them. She is a world-leading expert in Quality of Life for Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer.

The questions central to her research are: 1) How do children with a complex illness and their parents adjust? 2) What interventions can be developed and tested to support families and improve their quality of life? 3) How can we best measure outcomes, such as quality of life? She has developed a theoretical framework on parental coping to underpin the work, with clear testable hypotheses driving the research.