Teaching for life: teachers and life limiting conditions

Teaching for Life is a collaborative project between the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Health and Social Care at Canterbury Christ Church University. Due to advances in medicine, greater numbers of children with life limiting and life threatening conditions are attending mainstream schools. An international literature review showed that the needs of these children and their families are not being well met (Robinson and Summers, 2012). Children, young people and parents want teachers to have a better understanding of medical conditions and to provide better educational support. It concluded that schools need to work with both social and medical models, and within dynamic frameworks that bring together the family and health, social and education agencies. The Teaching for Life project examined the needs of teachers in relation to working with children with life limiting or life threatening conditions in schools. It comprised a questionnaire and interviews with teachers who had experience of working with such children, and those without. Many teachers were anxious about providing medical care and administering medicines. They were well aware of the importance of getting inter-disciplinary working around the needs of the child, but described delays in getting what they needed and when they needed it from health care professionals, to a degree that some felt they were failing the children. They acknowledged the importance of parents, but found that parents’ own emotional trauma made communication very difficult. They described school cultures where no one knew ‘how to talk about it’. Many teachers turned to the internet for information. Teachers wanted support to help them deal with illness, death and bereavement and a clear framework within which to work.