Education support services for improving school engagement and academic performance of children and adolescents with a chronic health condition

• Published in: Cochrane database of systematic reviews 2023-02, Vol.2 (2), p.CD011538-CD011538
• Main Authors: Barnett, Tony, Tollit, Michelle, Ratnapalan, Savithiri, Sawyer, Susan M, Kelaher, Margaret
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic Performance; Adolescent; Child; Child health; EDUCATION (in consultation with Campbell Education Coordinating Group and Cochrane DPLP Group where appropriate); Humans; Interrupted Time Series Analysis; Public health; Quality of Life; Schools
• ISSN: 1469-493X
• DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD011538.pub2

Chronic health conditions in children and adolescents can have profound impacts on education, well-being and health. They are described as non-communicable illnesses that are prolonged in duration, do not resolve spontaneously, and rarely cured completely. Due to variations in the definition of chronic health conditions and how they are measured prevalence estimates vary considerably and have been reported to be as high as 44% in children and adolescents. Of young people with a chronic health condition, an estimated 5% are affected by severe conditions characterised by limitations to daily activities impacting their ability to attend school. School attendance is important for academic and social skill development as well as well-being. When children and adolescents are absent from school due to a chronic health condition, school engagement can be affected. Disengagement from school is associated with poorer academic achievement, social-emotional functioning and career choices. Education support services for children and adolescents with chronic health conditions aim to prevent disengagement from school, education and learning during periods where their illness caused them to miss school. However, there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of educational support interventions at improving school engagement and educational/learning outcomes for children and adolescents with chronic health conditions. To describe the nature of educational support interventions for children and adolescents with a chronic health condition, and to examine the effectiveness of these interventions on school engagement and academic achievement. We searched eight electronic databases which span the health/medical, social sciences and education disciplines between 18 and 25 January 2021: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid). CINAHL (EBSCO), PsycINFO (EBSCO), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts: ASSIA (ProQuest), and PubMed (from 2019). We also searched five grey literature trials registers and databases between 8 and 12 February 2021 to identify additional published and unpublished studies, theses and conference abstracts, as well as snowballing reference lists of included studies. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs), controlled before-and-after studies and interrupted time series studies that met the inclusion criteria were selected. Other inclusion criteria were: participan