The Role of Social Support and Caregiver Burdens among Parents of Children with Cancer

Abstract

Background: Cancer is the most common disease in the present century and the number of affected children is increasing. It can cause many problems for family caregivers. This study assessed the correlation between social support and care-giving burden among parents of children with cancer.
 Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted by convenience sampling method on 230 parents (115 mothers and 115 fathers) referring to Oncology Clinic and Oncology Ward in Yazd Shahid Sadoughi Hospital (Iran) from March to August 2020 (Covid-19 Pandemics). Researchers asked the patients' parents to answer the questionnaires. The data were gathered by the demographic questionnaire, Care Burden Scale (CBS), and Social Support Scale and analyzed with SPSS21 using Pearson correlation coefficient, Chi-square, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) (P=0.05).
 Results: The mean of the care burden of parents was 52.19 2.48 and the social support of them was higher than that (78.78± 13.21). There was no significant correlation between social support and domains of general strain (P=0.90), disappointment (P=0.52), emotional involvement (P=0.53), environment (P=0.95), and isolation (P=0.40) of the care burden.
 Conclusions: There was no correlation between social support and care burden in the parents of children with cancer. Other factors may be involved in care burden of the parents. More research is needed with more samples in the future.

The effect of an online supportive program on the care burden of parents of children with leukemia

“…The chronic care burden deeply reduces the quality of life of caring parents and their subjective satisfaction with marital life. Thus, the impact of chronic care burden on family functioning deserves further exploration and serious attention (12).…”

“…Accordingly, paying attention to the patient's family is one of the important components of patient care (13). In various studies, the need for information, support, understanding of feelings, and hope have been reported as the basic needs of family members of a person with cancer (14).…”

“…Aggravation of the clinical condition of patients can also lead to an increase in the burden of care (22). according to the mentioned and considering that the studies carried out in this eld have mostly investigated the burden of care in different patients and the factors related to it (4,24), and most of the interventional studies have been face-to-face studies (12,25). Since parents, in addition to the role of taking care of their sick child, have other duties such as taking care of other children, working outside the home, etc., and the possibility of participating in face-to-face programs is not always possible for them, and considering the expansion of the use of social networks in virtual space, the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the impact of a support program using social networks on the care burden of parents of children with leukemia.…”