Families Experiencing a Child's Illness

Historically, families are the basic unit of our society. When a member of a family is sick, the rest of the family is affected. When planning health care for children who are ill or have a chronic or long-term condition, because the whole family is affected, then the whole family—however perceived by that family itself—must be the unit around which care is planned. Until about the 1960s, when a child was ill and admitted to hospital, the family was given little consideration, but changes around the world in health policy and ideas in the 1950s and 1960s led to an evolution in caring for children in which the family became the unit of care rather than the individual child. From this evolution, various models of ...