Health care services received by children with chronic illness

The mothers of 209 children with chronic illness who were being treated at a university-affiliated municipal hospital were interviewed in their homes to assess the extent to which their children received health services. Most families received traditional biomedical types of care, but few families had received psychosocial services. Children with the most severe conditions tended to receive more services than others, and receipt of nonbiomedical services was associated with identification of a specific provider. Mothers indicated that, in addition to traditional services, they wanted advice on how to manage the child's condition at home. These results confirm previous findings and suggest that gaps in service provision may be generalizable to children with chronic illness regardless of the setting and diagnosis.