School Life Services
Today, cancer is still taboo, and children who lost their hair are often abandoned or rejected by peers in school. This situation is also distressful for parents and siblings. Set up in 2001, the school life services help children as well as their parents for the return to school, and meet several objectives:
- Provide tools, create awareness, and inform parents, school personnel (teaching staff, support staff, nurse, administrators, and all parties involved), classmates, and other school students about the challenges and needs of children with cancer in order to help them continue with their schooling alongside their peers.
- Support siblings, friends, and classmates.
- Demystify the illness. Through their own life experiences, all children have a fair understanding of cancer and its consequences, though their knowledge is often limited or transformed by their imagination or false information. Despite the fact that this disease is widespread, it continues to raise questions and arouse fears among children.
- Discuss the different phases of the illness: onset of symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, hospitalization, medical staff, remission, feelings experienced during the illness, etc.
- Discuss the impacts and consequences, as well as the physical, cognitive, emotional, home, and psychosocial effects.
- Provide information on the different types of treatment.
- Relieve anxiety and fears towards the illness.
- Help children reflect, develop awareness, and make small gestures that could help the sick child.
To meet these objectives, the school life services for elementary schools include visits by Leucan volunteers who host activities around the theme of cancer to develop awareness about the illness. Adapted to different age groups, activities last from 30 to 60 minutes. Children have loads of questions and show a lot of interest. The proposed visuals and activities are key elements of the presentation. The subject matter must be dealt with very tactfully, because some children have already lost someone dear to cancer. The message must be well understood and should above all dispel fears.
Services for secondary schools are currently being developed. As well, hosted activities in daycare can also be organized on request.
Please contact us for more information on the school life services and to see if it is available in your region.
To become a volunteer, please fill out the Volunteer Registration Form.
