Special Education Services: A Manual of Policies, Procedures and Guidelines

D.6 Hospital Education services

Purpose
The purpose of hospital education services is to enable students to continue their educational program while hospitalized.

Description of services
Depending on their health, hospitalized students should continue with an educational program as similar as possible to the program they would receive in school.

In most instances hospital teachers employed by school districts provide classroom assignments and instructional support for students confined to hospital. Classroom teachers maintain ongoing responsibility for coordinating the student's educational program with the hospital teacher acting as liaison.

Districts should establish procedures to ensure that:

• all appropriate school assignments are provided to the student;
• the hospital teacher provides reports on student progress;
• regular contact is established among the hospital teacher, the regular classroom teacher and the parent;
• the hospital teacher has access to available school district resources (e.g., equipment, materials and curriculum guides);
• facilities appropriate to good learning conditions within the hospital setting are secured through agreement between the school district and the hospital administration; and
• records of referrals received and educational services rendered to hospitalized students are maintained and available at the district level.

Access to Hospital Education services
Students eligible for education services within the hospital include those with medical conditions including injury, disease, surgery, pregnancy, or psychological disability. Before education services are provided to the student, authorization from the attending physician should be received. Instruction should be initiated as soon as the student's medical condition permits.

Funding
Hospital Homebound funding to school boards is included in the per pupil allocation.

For hospital education services designated as Provincial Resource Programs, information is contained in Section F of this manual.

Personnel
Teachers working in hospital education services should be able to demonstrate:

• successful teaching experience at elementary or secondary level;
• knowledge of health care and community services;
• the ability to work effectively with parents, public health and hospital personnel, medical staff and, following discharge of students, with homebound teachers or other school district personnel;
• knowledge of curricula and instructional resources across a range of school years;
• knowledge of distributed learning techniques and computer-assisted learning;
• knowledge of human behaviour and the ability to work effectively with students who have medical and/or psychological problems;
• knowledge of child development and an understanding of the educational needs of special children; and
• skills to assess the educational needs of a student and to modify learning activities, intended outcomes, teaching techniques and materials to meet the student's specific needs.

Where Teachers’ assistants are required, they will work under the supervision of the hospital teacher.

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