Welcoming parents in a paediatric service

Parents are now considered as an indispensable partner of hospital paediatric care. This has not always been the case. For a long time they were excluded from children’s hospitals. Their continuous presence with their child constitutes a real change of paradigm, underpinned by the reflections of professionals – which does not exclude resistances – and the children’s rights’ movement. Their role is not to substitute themselves for the carers or to enter into competition with them. The quality of their welcome depends on the role that the professionnals attribute themselves with: supporting parenthood, accompanying the various psychic movements of the parents faced with their suffering child, and also allowing them to rest, depending on the case. Enabling parents to fulfil their appropriate role is a dynamic being perpetually reinvented.