Fairy tale in a crisis context: a new methodology to promote sustainable coexistence practices in hospital

The impact of an onco-haematological illness for children and family is a crisis that interrupts the continuity of life. We present the use of invented fairy-tale methodology in groups with forty-nine onco-haematological/hospitalized children. A qualitative analysis shows the resources based on the use of fantasy like elements to support the institution and community. We performed a cluster analysis on the tales constructed. The results highlighted three main carriers of sense:the representation of illness/the relational world/the representation of the institution. The use of narrative group allowed the children and operators to tell, share and transform the experience of illness through a different/symbolically way. The fairy-tale is such a symbolic mediator of psychic/social processes. Within a groups, it offers new solutions to the crisis while improving interpersonal relationships/communication between the participants; it offered to the operators the chance to overcome their own sense of impotence/frustration. The research-intervention shows constraints and resources linked to the institution: on one hand the urgencies require the child and family the flattening of them on the level of medicalization; on the other hand it can offer spaces to integrate meanings. The hospital institution through the crisis seems to be set up as a model able to catch resources and promote sustainable coexistence practices.