When children, adolescents or young adults suffer from cancer, in many cases they can only attend their school or education to a limited extent or, at times, not at all. Therefore, special programmes are needed to provide targeted educational support to these young affected people during and after an illness.
In a systematic study, such support programmes were closely examined: 20 programmes were studied, of which 12 were school re‐entry
programmes (SRPs). Out of these, only three programmes met all the important evaluation criteria and it is not yet clear whether these programmes bring evident support – nevertheless, they are promising and further development work in this direction is needed in order to be able to offer the best possible programmes.
These following points, which the authors recommend, are particularly important:
Ensure education support services are available to all cancer patients
Provide details about programme content, timing, and materials to enhance implementation
Ground programmes in appropriate theory and modelled outcomes and utilise rigorous methods of evaluation
Adapt programmes to local contexts to support implementation
