Here, a teacher shares their experience of having a child with cancer in their school and how they’ve created a safe, supportive and, importantly, ‘normal’ environment for them.
Cancer isn’t a topic that’s easy to discuss for anyone, as most people have first-hand experience of dealing with the distress of diagnosis, treatment, aftercare and sometimes, unfortunately, bereavement. This is why dealing with students with cancer can be so hard, mentally and emotionally. We’ve had a pupil who’s been with us for several years. At our initial transition meeting, we were told that the prognosis wasn’t good. But from this moment on, our student has continued to defy the odds. As a school, you may think we are helpless during this process, but that couldn’t be further from the truth in our experience.
Often, a school represents normality
It’s a break from treatment and somewhere patients are just the same as every other child. For us, it was important that that was exactly what we were: ‘the norm’. Nothing different, no special treatment, just a school. But we aren’t just a school, we’re a community, who at times are struggling to process information given to us about one of our students. And, similar to families, we’re trying to ensure we support one of our own to the best of our abilities.
From our initial meetings we were introduced to specialists that were involved with our student, and the family were open to discussing everything with us which makes the process much easier. There are no hidden secrets. There are transparent, open lines of communication between all parties involved, with the same goal. Ultimately, we are trying to ensure we all support each other and, most importantly, the child in the most difficult time.
As a school, I’d be lying if I said we didn’t struggle with the information we sometimes received. As the lead link, it’s often difficult to firstly digest information received, but then also to think strategically about how it impacts on the school, our students and the wider community, before taking the next steps.
As a school, we’ve found that the best approach is to be open and honest
We believe that by dealing with all updates as a staff group means we are able to safeguard and support each other to the best of our ability. Our communication with the family is the most important part of this. For a lead link to forge a strong, positive relationship based on trust has aided us to ensure the family’s needs are the first we meet, before thinking how we achieve that goal as a school.
The support we’ve received from the nursing team has been phenomenal
This applies to not only explaining things to us and keeping us updated in terms of how we need to respond to things in school, but to coming in and speaking with staff. Through their support we’ve up-to-date risk assessments and policies and procedures for how we deal with situations if they ever arise. Thankfully, this isn’t something we’ve had to put into place and we’re confident that - with the continued open communication between all parties - we can keep it this way.
Essentially, we work hard as a school to support each other
In the current climate especially, it’s important that we’ve created an environment in which we do this. By understanding how cancer affects so many of our staff and students, particularly those close to the pupil concerned, we’ve been able to ensure the correct support is in place internally and externally. This has meant that, as a community school, we’ve achieved that aim of making school the norm for our student. However, we wouldn’t have been able to do that without the support of the family and the nursing team.
