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Launch Toolkit: essential travel guide for parents

Valuable support for parents.


The year 2023 starts with a great initiative: the launch of the 'Toolkit for parents' is a fact! A valuable collection of information, products and shared experience stories that you can support as a parent when you have a child who is not (anymore) getting better.

Johannes Verheijden, network coordinator at the Integral Child Care Network, has worked hard on it and is delighted: “The toolkit supports parents from (the search for) a diagnosis. We want to show parents that they are not alone and do not have to do everything alone. After all, many parents have already taken the path of pediatric palliative care.”

The tool kit consists of:

  • a guide for a good conversation; full of tips to improve communication with a healthcare professional.
  • filmed experience stories ; candid and honest
  • a chatterbox with no less than 139 beautiful and interesting questions , propositions, dilemmas and short sketches of the situation. To start a conversation in an accessible way.
  • A piece of Me; 23 portraits of children in pediatric palliative care
  • Answers to frequently asked questions about work and finances in relation to having a sick child.
  • Parent's Guide, After Diagnosis ; this guide takes you through how to deal with emotions, provide information, environment and have conversations if you have just heard a diagnosis.
  • Podcast , parents' experience stories.

The right luggage

The toolkit brings parents recognition and acknowledgment. It is a compact - almost all-encompassing - travel guide that supports them in various areas to 'go on the road'. It offers an entrance to look at their own situation from various perspectives and to feel supported. Parents also see that there is always support from the seven NIK and the various professionals they have to deal with or will have to deal with.

Johannes continues: “I am extremely proud of the role that both parents and professionals have played in this process. Their experiences, knowledge and insights are fantastic. And their intrinsic motivation to want the best and share their experiences was moving. I think the uniqueness of this project is that parents and professionals make it clear that palliative care for children is not a concern of islands, but a total picture. It is a recipe with countless ingredients, where every decision affects the future of the family in question.

Also interesting for the healthcare professional

Johannes emphasizes that the toolkit can also be used by healthcare professionals. “Read, listen, learn and apply! Think of your discipline as a very small part of the family's overall situation. In the past, present and future. Think and act interdisciplinary. Where the quality of the future for children and families is paramount in every facet of life,” explains Johannes.

The toolkit is part of the Guide . With the launch of the Toolkit, it has been given a new look. Clear and pleasant to use.


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