How We Help
Educational Supports
Cancer treatment can impact a child’s learning during treatment and for years to come. Kids with Cancer Society offers educational supports that grow with children and families, helping them navigate challenges from the classroom through post-secondary education and into adulthood.
Through Cancer in the Classroom, BrainWorks and our Bursary Program,
families can access practical resources, gain greater understanding and receive ongoing support throughout their educational journey.
Cancer in the Classroom
A childhood cancer diagnosis can also affect friendships, routines and a student’s sense of connection at school.
Cancer in the Classroom helps create understanding, giving classmates and educators age-appropriate information about cancer, treatment and the changes a student may experience along the way.
Through individualized classroom visits, the program creates a safe and interactive space to ask questions, address misconceptions and reduce uncertainty. It can also help students navigate the transition back to school, where absences, changes in appearance, fatigue or new accommodations can sometimes set their experience apart from their peers.
Brainworks
Cancer and its treatment can affect how a child learns, participates and experiences everyday school life.
BrainWorks provides specialized, individualized support to help children and youth navigate these challenges, building on each student’s strengths while helping remove barriers to learning and participation.
From cognitive strategies and counselling to assistive technology, school planning and advocacy, BrainWorks helps students access learning in ways that work for them, participate more fully and feel that they belong.
At its heart is a simple philosophy: build on strengths, remove barriers and increase possibilities.
BrainWorks Pillars of Support
Resilience and Coping
Access is an important part of all our services.
Assistive technology, accommodations, adaptations, and other supports can help remove barriers and increase opportunities to participate, learn, communicate, and belong.
Helping students understand themselves, manage challenges and develop strategies for coping with the emotional and physical effects of cancer and treatment.
This includes support around:
- stress, uncertainty, frustration and change;
- confidence, friendships and belonging;
- re-entering school life;
- fatigue, overwhelm and the demands of school and everyday life; and
- sensory and regulation needs.
Learning and Access
Understanding how an individual student learns and identifying barriers that interfere with their ability to pay attention, demonstrate their knowledge or participate in learning.
This includes support around:
- memory and learning;
- information processing and cognitive load;
- executive functioning, organization and task initiation;
- attention and working memory;
- physical, sensory, communication or motor access;
- vision, hearing or other changes affecting access to information; and
- assistive and accessibility technology.
School and Student Supports
Turning what we know about the child into practical supports that work in the real world of school. BrainWorks isn’t simply explaining cancer to schools. It is helping translate knowledge about each individual child into practical action.
- helping teams understand how cancer and treatment affect learning and participation;
- consulting with students, parents, teachers and school teams;
- developing individualized accommodations and strategies;
- assisting with IPP development;
- conducting school visits;
- collaborative problem solving; and
- planning transitions between grades, schools, treatment and a return to learning.
Advocacy
Helping students and families develop a meaningful voice in decisions about learning, support and participation. Empowering self-advocacy for children and families.
That includes helping:
- students understand and communicate what works for them;
- families articulate priorities and concerns;
- families, schools and other professionals develop shared understanding;
- connect families with services, resources and community supports; and
- translate recommendations into a practical roadmap.
ACCESS + PARTICIPATION + BELONGING
Assistive technology, accommodations, adaptations and other supports are used to remove barriers and create greater opportunities for the child to participate, learn, communicate and belong.
Bursary
The Kids with Cancer Society is there for children and families through childhood cancer and the journey that follows.
Through annual bursaries of $500 to $2,000, eligible childhood cancer survivors receive support toward post-secondary and continuing education as they pursue their goals and take important steps forward.
Each bursary is an investment in possibility, helping young people continue learning, build independence and shape a future beyond cancer.
Low Barrier, Always Free
