School Counselors' Role in Working With Students Living With Chronic Illness

School Reentry Obstacles For Students With Chronic Illness

Thies and McAllister (2001) noted that within the academic setting, special education services tend to focus on students with developmental disabilities. Focusing on students with developmental disabilities leaves students with a chronic illness without academic services. Lack of special education systems for students with a chronic illness means that their health and educational needs within the school are not being met (Thies & McAllister, 2001). Lack of special education for students with a chronic illness also implies that teachers and staff within the school system may not have adequate skills, knowledge, or training to adequately assist students with chronic illness. Entire school systems should support students with chronic illnesses (Hamlet et al., 2011).

Students with a chronic illness find themselves stuck between two systems – medical and academic. Medical and school systems traditionally operate in two distinctly different modalities. Policies and philosophies, specifically, can be different within these two systems (Kaffenberger, 2006; Thies, 1999). For example, the medical system may focus on physical wellbeing of the student with a chronic illness, including medications, other invasive medical interventions, or mediation of symptoms, such as pain. School systems, on the other hand, may focus on the student with a chronic illness’ schoolwork, academic success, and absences. School systems may have strict absence requirements prior to a student qualifying for home instruction or other flexible learning (Kaffenberger, 2006). Waiting until a student with a chronic illness misses the required number of days per the school system could potentially leave the student far behind their peers and unable to adjust to accommodations necessary for academic success. School systems should be proactive in having plans and procedures in place to specifically address students with a chronic illness. Unsupportive school system policies are one of the barriers found to be associated with reentry into the school system (Kaffenberger, 2006).

The priority of which system (school or medical) becomes the focus is dependent on whether the student is currently exhibiting physical implications (poor health) due to the chronic illness or not. If the student is actively, acutely ill (exhibiting medical symptoms of acute poor health), the medical system may take priority. If the student is medically stable (not acutely ill), learning and the school system may become the primary focus. The binary nature of these competing systems creates difficulty for the student with a chronic illness: the two systems may not communicate or work collaboratively with each other (Hamlet et al., 2011; Harden et al., 2020; Kaffenberger, 2006; Thies, 1999).