[Hospital care and school attendance. Experimental school attendance outside the hospital for children in a psychiatric department (author's transl)].

If school is a natural part of the world of childhood, hospital and disease may impose themselves. In that case, maintaining the child's relationship with the school environment becomes a problem. Schools have therefore been set up inside hospitals. The acceptance, by schools, of patients with chronic illness or incapacitation has been facilitated. We chose an intermediate answer in which, for a given child, the hospital and the school coexist, although they remain separate. Hospitalized children attend ordinary schools located near the hospital. Through the observations of three children, we describe the progression of our considerations about the effects of this practice. When a hospital department opens up to the outside world, both external and internal difficulties arise. We believe that the process by which this adventure is made possible and is carried out is part of the team work which gives the child, it's parents, and the medical staff, more autonomy, thereby helping the child to return to it's family.