School time toolkit: Supporting parents and teachers of children who have a chronic illness and intermittent school attendance

This paper presents the findings from an evaluation of the School Time Toolkit (School Time), a multimedia program to support parents and teachers of elementary school-aged children who have a chronic illness and intermittent school attendance (CICISA). CICISA experience myriad negative academic and psychosocial effects, yet parents and teachers experience difficulties applying for and implementing school services to mitigate these effects. School Time aims to provide parents and teachers with the knowledge and skills to secure and implement school services to help CICISA succeed socially and academically at school. We evaluated the School Time pilot, which consists of print Parents' and Teachers' Guides, using the following research questions: To what extent does the Parents' Guide positively change parents' knowledge about, attitudes towards, and self-efficacy to secure, navigate, and advocate for school services for their child? To what extent does the Teachers' Guide positively change teachers' knowledge about, attitudes towards, and self-efficacy to implement accommodations to support CICISA in the classroom? We collected primary quantitative data from 60 parents of CICISA and 60 elementary school teachers. We used a pretest/post-test quasi-experimental design to explore the statistical relationship between exposure to the Parents' and Teachers' Guides and dependent variables of the Guides' efficacy. Findings suggest the Parents' and Teachers' Guides increase parents' and teachers' knowledge and self-efficacy, but we saw little change on attitudinal measures, which were high at baseline. The findings indicate that the pilot increases parents' and teachers' knowledge and self-efficacy skills to help CICISA succeed in the classroom.