Teaching and caring for a child with a shortened life span due to illness (and often their siblings) in the school environment can bring many difficult challenges for staff and the school community. These could include how to navigate this potentially stressful and emotional time in order to optimise the time the child has left at school with the resources that are available.

Many excellent resources are available for schools about death and dying (either of children or parents/grandparents). ‘Teaching Children with Life-Limiting Illnesses: A manual for schools’ is a resource that has been written by the Department of Paediatric Palliative Care at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead.  It is intended to be a guide for teachers and the school communities to help support them through the time when the children are ‘well’ but have limited capacity to attend school or are deteriorating and their needs change from educational goals to those of socialisation and normality that being at school provides.  Topics covered include more common illnesses, how to maximise time at school, communication issues and discussing death and dying. There is also information on managing death and bereavement.