The Experiences of Hospitalized Children
In Peru, more than 156,000 children under 15 years old (INEI 2010) are hospitalized during different periods of their life leaving apart their right to education. These patients come mostly from poor families and many of them face their illness pulled apart from their parents, without the emotional and affective support they need to recover.
This is why, from the strategic point of view of Corporate Responsibility, twelve years ago Telefonica Foundation and the Peruvian Studies Institute (IEP) developed the program Telefonica Foundation Classrooms in Hospitals, an action that seeks social inclusion and educational equity for the inmate boys and girls, by strengthening their basic abilities and autonomy. This way they keep up with the school´s learning pace and they can reincorporate to the education system when they recover.
This program, focused on hospitalized children´s rights and the use of technology, benefited more than 40,000 young patients in public healthcare institutions from Arequipa, Chiclayo, Cusco, Huancayo, Iquitos and Lima. In 2009 the program expanded to Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela and Spain, becoming a global project based on a Latin American network for care and cooperation, making it possible to implement joint actions involving different countries. The inmate children, their teachers, their families and the personnel working in each hospital are all part of this network
The Experiences of Hospitalized Children is the product of a research by Giselle Silva Panez on education in hospitals. This publication analyzes the hospitalized children´s experiences and presents the classrooms as places apart from the rest of the hospital which for children mean spots to play and enjoy. The main benefit of this program is the affective support received by the child in the classroom.