Family-Centered Care in Pediatric Health

Dear Colleagues,

The number of children living with complex chronic conditions is rapidly increasing. Children with complex chronic conditions and their families try to live lives that are as normal as possible. Yet, the impact of disease and daily care tasks influences their ability and opportunity to participate in daily life and society. Healthcare professionals working with these families often rely on a disease-oriented approach, with a focus on disease and symptom management. Life goals are often not clearly explored or defined, which might prevent families from organizing their lives and family balance in an adequate way.

To support children with complex chronic conditions and their families, strategies with which to identify their values and preferences need to be developed and implemented in healthcare. Important questions regarding approaches to providing family-centred care remain. How do we explore what is important to an individual family? How do families define a life worth living in their own contexts? What kind of support might they benefit from to achieve their goals? How do we involve children in conversations about their own health in an age-appropriate way? What communication skills or tools do clinicians need to support children and families to elicit what is really important to them? 

This Special Issue will focus on exploring backgrounds and strategies with which to provide family-centred care in the context of children living with chronic complex conditions. Both reviews and original research (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed) will be considered for publication.

Dr. Jurrianne C. Fahner
Dr. Marijke C. Kars
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• chronic complex conditions
• communication
• family-centered care
• goals of care
• shared decision making