Supporting everyday life in children who have ended braintumor treatment
- an intervention study
Yearly, in Sweden, about 80 children are diagnosed with a braintumor. The treatment consists of surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy depending on type of tumor. Most of the children survive but late effects such as difficulties in physical, psychosocial, and cognitive areas are common which affects the child’s ability to participate in everyday life. Several actors, such as health care service, habilitation service and the school are often involved. The support from each organization are often well organized, but when collaboration is needed, the transfer of information can be experienced as messy and unclear. The parents often become coordinators between the organizations. In this project we study the child’s re-entry to school as well as if the collaboration and information transfer can be improved by learning collaborative problem solving.
The first aim is to investigate how the child’s problems, recommendations and received support is described in records from the health care organization, habilitation, and school. The descriptions are linked to ICF-CY*; how the body functions, how well the child can perform activities, how they participate in school as well as how the environment looks like. We think that problems related to the body is more clearly described than problems related to participation.
The second aim is to test if an intervention based on collaborative problem solving between the child-school-health care- habilitation can be a way to increase the child’s activities and participation in school, after ending cancer directed treatment focusing the brain tumor. Earlier research, regarding collaborative problem solving focusing other groups of children and adults, have shown that the intervention has contributed to an enhanced ability to solve problems and to function through gaining increased knowledge and strategies.
* International classification of functioning, disability, and health: children and youth version: ICF-CY.
Contact persons: Maria Björk, Ann-Christin Björklund
