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We are very grateful for the support and guidance of our Trial Steering Committee, including Professor Chloe Marshall of University College, London who is the independent chair and Dr. Susan Smith of Essex University, Dr. Allan Clark of University of East Anglia and Katherine Farrow, Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist, our independent members, also Corinne Fox, our parent representative and Mary Hartshorne, Director of Outcomes and Information at I CAN, the UK’s communication charity. We are also grateful to the on-going support of NELFT in particular Fiona Horton, Research Business Operations Manager, Sandeep Toot, deputy director of R&D and Nita Madhani, Assistant Director for Children and Young People.
This article presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme (Grant Reference Number PB-PG-0416-20035). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
Availability of data and materials
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study will be stored in non-publically available repositories within the Universities of York and Bedfordshire by the end of 2019. Anonymised data may be accessed and analysed by members of the project team and with researchers collaborating with members of the project team on the analysis of these data. Consent from participants was not sought for sharing raw data publicly. Therefore, external researchers seeking to access the data for use in future projects can do so via any reasonable request to the Chief Investigator Suzanne Murphy (or her delegate), and projects using the data must have been approved in accordance with contemporary UK ethical and regulatory processes pertaining to the release of anonymised data under these circumstances.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
Ethical approval was obtained from Cambridge Central Research Ethics Committee, REC ref.: 17/EE/0320, IRAS Project ID: 227864. All participants will provide informed written consent and in the case of children their parents will provide consent on their behalf. The trial will be conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (1996) and the principles of Good Clinical Practice (GCP). The chief investigator is required to submit regular reports and a final report at conclusion of the trial to NIHR, the funder.
Consent for publication
Not applicable—this manuscript does not contain data from any individual person.
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Murphy, S., Joffe, V., Messer, D. et al. Evaluating ‘enhancing pragmatic language skills for young children with social communication impairments’ (E-PLAYS): protocol for a feasibility randomised controlled trial study. Pilot Feasibility Stud 5, 75 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40814-019-0456-z