CLOSE UP Perception of the Hospital School experience.

Hospitalisation is always a traumatic event for children. It is important to communicate effectively from the start and facilitate the child’s adaptation to the new hospital environment and establish continuity during this period of time. This project aimed to establish mutual knowledge and communication between patients with a medical condition and their schools and teachers and was carried out in the Hospital School in Lecce. We looked at how to approach a teaching unit in order to be good for regular school and hospital school through facilitators. A total of 40 hours of activities were delivered as part of a project named “CLOSE UP”. The project involved 70 children (8-10 years old), from 3 different schools and 8 teachers. This article presents only the children's activities and evaluations. The project was based on a set of teaching units aimed at cooperatively involving children and teachers from both the hospital school and from mainstream classrooms. The methodologies put forward here use expressive languages such as music and art in activities such as storytelling, music and drawing, as a means of reaching out to others and as universal and inclusive media of communication. The activities were evaluated through a test. The results show how in all classes children's activities improved peer climate and affected emotional well-being. Conclusions: providing common activities for hospitalised children and their peers in the regular classroom enables peer psychosocial development. The final results of the project demonstrate that it is possible to promote positive interactions between children with different life experiences through universal expressive languages.