34 Background Good nutrition is important for children with a chronic disorder. Good nutritional care is essential for them, not only because of the preventative health effect, but also because of the curative effect on the disorder. Chronic disorders make it difficult to follow normal education on a regular basis. In the Netherlands, there are thirteen schools that provide special primary education to chronically ill children. These schools offer medical care that enables chronically ill children to attend classes. The schools recognize the importance of good nutritional care for their pupils. Some provide meals during school hours and/or give parents nutritional assistance. A lack of funding threatens the continued provision of these services and children may therefore miss out on these nutritional care elements in the future. Against this background SEO Economic Research, on behalf of InnovationNetwork, carried out an exploratory analysis into the social costs and benefits of the provision of optimal nutritional care by schools. In this study a costbenefit comparison was made between the situation where these schools provide optimal nutritional care and the situation where these schools are unable to provide optimal nutritional care and the children are given food from home. In addition, the study looked at which data are necessary to make a full cost-benefit analysis, and at the manner in which these data are to be gathered. Cost-benefit analysis A literature-based cost-benefit analysis showed that better nutrition leads to better child health, reduced school absenteeism, better cognitive abilities and a better quality of life for the parents. These effects have been quantified wherever possible. In this connection, several tentative assumptions were made about the size of the effects of nutritional care by LZK schools, namely: • Nutritional care by LZK schools gives parents 15 minutes more free time per day (benefits €2,668 per child). • Better nutritional care will in the future lead to an increase in the labour participation rate of the chronically ill of 40% to 41% (income €1,369 per child). • Among 30% of the children with epilepsy at LZK schools better nutrition leads to health cost savings of €10,000 in the first year and second year after the start of optimal nutritional care (income €1,662 per child). The following table indicates the social costs and benefits of optimal nutritional care by LZK schools versus the situation where schools are unable to provide this nutritional care and children are given food from home. Pagina 39
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