School Attendance and Participation

School attendance and participation is a very important part of a child’s world. To maintain normalcy, it is necessary to continue your child's education.  School participation gives children a sense of the future and helps them look beyond their illness. It provides them with challenges to gain a sense of accomplishment. School also fosters friendships, which promote your child's need for social acceptance.

Our policy is to support continuing education and promote school attendance for all our patients as soon as possible after diagnosis.

School Re-Entry Program

Because we realize that returning to school after the diagnosis of cancer is a big step for a child and parents to make, our school re-entry program helps smooth the transition. Here's how it works:

• Your social worker will ask your permission to send your child’s school teacher and principal a letter describing your child’s diagnosis and treatment. The letter will stress our goal of school attendance for all children with cancer.
• Your social worker and primary clinic nurse will follow up that letter with phone calls.
• School visits by a child life specialist and your child’s primary nurse to meet with teachers and classmates can be arranged. (They will discuss the content of the school presentation with you and your child beforehand to make sure that your child is comfortable with the information that will be shared.)
• Further school contacts can be arranged if and when needed.

All children are expected to attend school on a regular basis with the following general exceptions:

• If many classmates are infected with chickenpox and your child has not had chickenpox or has no immunity to chickenpox (a blood test is checked at diagnosis to give us this information)
• If a measles outbreak occurs in the classroom and your child has no immunity to measles or has not previously received a measles immunization (a blood test may be checked to give us this information)
• If your child has a fever or any other symptoms such as a bad cough that can spread disease even for otherwise healthy children
• If your child does not feel good after a treatment of an illness and you have discussed the condition with us