Child: care, health and development
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Child Care Health Dev · Jul 2009
Comparative StudyAgreement between children with cancer and their parents in reporting the child's health-related quality of life during a stay at the hospital and at home.
Although parent-child agreement is widely studied in the paediatric clinical sample, no study has compared parent-child agreement during home and hospital stays. We aimed to determine the level of agreement in reports of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) between parents of children with cancer and the children themselves during a stay in the hospital and a stay at home. ⋯ Agreement between parents and their children who have cancer in reporting the child's HRQoL differed by location of stay. For the home stay, the agreement was better for domains related to the child's physical life, but for the hospital stay, it was better for domains related to the child's behaviour/psychological life.
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Child Care Health Dev · Jul 2009
Children who have complex health needs: parents' experiences of their child's education.
An increasing number of children have complex and continuing health needs. These children have the same right to a full range of education opportunities as other children. ⋯ Inclusion in education should include pre-school provision, and more work in this area would be beneficial. Inclusion in mainstream education is only beneficial if it enables the child to participate fully with their peers. This requires practical and organizational issues to be addressed, services to be well co-ordinated, responsibilities and funding to be clear, and staff to be enabled to be confident in meeting the child's needs. However, it is also vital that individuals and organizations have a positive attitude to children and to inclusion. The additional effort and time which children may have to spend on their school work because of their health needs should also be recognized and supported appropriately.