The Hopp Children’s Cancer Center Heidelberg (KiTZ) is a joint institution of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg University Hospital (UKHD) and the University of Heidelberg (Uni HD).
Starting school is a big step for children. After kindergarten, the “newbies” can expect an unfamiliar everyday life with new classmates and other requirements. To ensure that this transition is successful, most kindergartens prepare five and six-year-olds for the start of school with a preschool program. You train important motor, social and logical skills: using scissors and pencils, a basic feeling for numbers and quantities, as well as colors and shapes. You learn to speak in front of others or to take a step back and listen.
“Some children with cancer, who are sometimes on the ward for weeks and then have regular appointments in the day clinic, miss this important time,” explains Nadine Heue from the Hopp Children’s Cancer Center Heidelberg (KiTZ). Since 2021, she has been working in the “Fit for School” project, which is financed by the COURAGE Foundation for chronically ill children at the Center for Child and Adolescent Medicine at Heidelberg University Hospital (UKHD) together with the parents’ association “Aktion für krebskranke Kinder e.V. Heidelberg”.
Nadine Heue is an educator, registered nurse and special education teacher and accompanies children with chronic cancer and cancer from the age of four and a half, at the children's clinic and at KiTZ, so that they can start school despite their serious illness. “As a result of the therapies, these children are often physically impaired and sometimes their development is delayed. They have a particular need to catch up when it comes to, for example, perception, concentration, motor skills and language development. We try to compensate for this with creative, playful training, always adapted to the child’s individual state of health,” explains Heue. For example, she practiced the basics of sign language with an almost deaf boy suffering from leukemia. It is essential to take the whole family with you: the parents also first had to understand how they can specifically support their son in his language development and communication skills so that he has a chance of mastering school well.
“The most important thing to me is to create a harmonious learning environment in which the children can develop with joy and trust, be creative and laugh with me,” says Heue. Over the past three and a half years, she has intensively supported 73 students for months to years. “I’m always very happy when the children arrive well at school and tell me about their experiences.” Heue's staff position is financed by donations from the COURAGE Foundation and the Heidelberg Parents' Association. Thanks to these donations, the “Fit for School” program initiated by the foundation has been running at the Heidelberg Children’s Hospital for 13 years. A total of 406 children of preschool and school age have already taken part.
About the foundation „COURAGE für chronisch kranke Kinder“ (COURAGE for chronically ill children)
“COURAGE for chronically ill children” was launched at the Center for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine at Heidelberg University Hospital in 2002. In autumn 2018, the initiative was transferred to the COURAGE foundation of the same name. Its aim is to provide additional services specifically for chronically ill children, in addition to the medical services. With the “Fit for School” project, chronically ill preschool children with frequent and long hospital stays are supported in their development, so that they face the same conditions as healthy children when they start school. Another project of the COURAGE Foundation supports children and young people who are treated with a blood purification procedure (dialysis) all year round in the clinic or daily at home or who need to be closely monitored after a kidney or liver transplant. More informatio on the foundation
