For parents of children with cancer, the task of learning and retaining crucial information about providing safe care at home can be overwhelming. The shock and emotional distress following a child’s cancer diagnosis can make it even more challenging to process and remember vital information. This lack of retention often leaves parents struggling to ensure they are following the right care protocols during an incredibly stressful time.

To address this issue, the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) developed expert consensus recommendations aimed at standardizing and streamlining the informational content provided to parents. These guidelines also emphasize the importance of tailoring delivery methods to accommodate varying parental learning styles. However, while the recommendations are valuable, their implementation has been limited to conventional delivery methods such as face-to-face teaching and printed materials. Unfortunately, these methods may not always result in sustained learning for some parents, leaving them vulnerable to gaps in knowledge during critical care moments.

To tackle this challenge, COG developed the KidsCare App – a one-stop shop for all the information one needs while caring for a child with cancer for parents and caregivers.

Access to research, innovation, care being our core mission, ACCESS recently provided funding support customization of the COG KidsCare app at all Canadian pediatric oncology centers for the next two years. This will ensure that every Canadian family has access to personalized, accurate, and relevant information, tailored to their child’s treatment center and specific care needs. As the sponsor for all centers’ use of the app, ACCESS will also include crucial ACCESS information within the app. Additionally, through this work multiple centers can benefit from this resource without investing additional resources and enable the standardization of content across all centers, ensuring that parents have consistent, high-quality resources at their fingertips.

Download the KidsCare App here

For more information, please contact Jenna Craig.