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At Grief Encounter Project, we find much willingness to help bereaved children but a real fear about upsetting or damaging the children and young people.
Up to 70% of schools are dealing with a bereaved child at any given time (Holland 2001) (in Job and Frances guidance on helping schools develop their work with bereavement issues)
92.4% of 11-16yr olds reported a significant bereavement (Harrison and Harrington2001) (in Ribbens Mccarthy’s review on research)
3.9% of children (Sweeting 98) had experienced a death of a parent before 16yrs old and similar for a death of a sibling.
Young people report very different experiences at school, but we do know that how the school manages the individual is critical. Teachers can make a real difference.
We aim to encourage schools to:
- accept that death happens and be prepared
- develop a range of strategies to help deal with bereavement, including a school bereavement policy (see sample)
- appoint a school bereavement liaison representative
- use and help us develop new resources (see Bad Time Rhymes Poetry Competition)
- contact their local bereavement services (via the Childhood Bereavement Network)
Information
Bereavement Strategy: 4 stages
Helpful tools we have found come in the form of: Grief Encounter Workbook-available from this website Child Bereavement Trust’s excellent schools pack (01494446648) Child Bereavement –Job and Frances (NCB 02078436000) The policy context of addressing bereavement in schools (CBN (02078439309) CBN’s video resources -children talking. Leeds Animation Workshop- Grief in the Family Good Grief - B.Ward (CRUSE Bereavement Care 08701671667) SEAL Resources (see Young People’s Zone reading list) Websites: www.rd4u.org.uk |
Stage 1: Preparation
- Consultation and discussion with staff including teachers, lunchtime supervisors, SENCOs, School Nurse, School Counsellor, Educational Psychologists, Learning assistants and pupils, parents, other schools.
- Gather background information.
- Possibly form a “working party” to do the above, also including interested local organisations (CAMHS), National Healthy Schools representative, Social workers for example.
Stage 2 : Planning
- Appoint a “bereavement liaison” person.
- Gain consensus from consultation and prepare policy(sample below)
- Prepare sample letters.
Stage 3 : Implementation
- Offer staff training (help from GEP/other local organisations).
- Set up peer mentoring scheme
- Workshops for bereaved children
- Allocated school lesson time (Drama, English)
- PSHE time, INSET days
Stage 4 : Review
- How many bereaved children in school?
- How many have been helped?
- How have our interventions helped?
Sample Bereavement Policy
In the immediate
- Contact with the family is essential – talk to and/or visit with the pupil and family.
- Disseminate accurate information, following the family wishes.
- Consult the young person regarding return to school strategies.
- Brief the bereaved pupil’s class before return, again mindful of pupil’s wishes.
- Help class write letters, send flowers, cards, prepare for return.
- Whole school assembly and lesson time planned to address concerns.
- Have contact with pupil just before return to school.
- Discuss funeral with staff and pupils and who may attend.
- All of the above should be mindful of the family and pupil’s culture and wishes.
Ongoing
- Ensuring missed work is available and pupil does not fall behind.
- Provide a safe space and person if pupil needs time out- and monitor.
- Consider the possibilities of peer support.
- Be alert to verbal and non-verbal communications and changes in behaviour.
- Consider ways to commemorate the dead person, if the pupil wishes.
- Support the staff supporting the young person.
- Remember that grieving will not be over in a day, week or month.
- The bereavement history should travel with the young person, noting significant dates.
- Remember and respect
School may be an escape for the bereaved person- a place where there are no parents and reminders. It may be 6 months/1 year after a sudden death that the young person reacts. This is normal and not an excuse or attention-seeking behaviour.
10 main needs of bereaved child
- To acknowledge that death is omnipresent
- Need for structure
- Need to tell story
- Make sense of confusions with adult
- To have their pain held
- Help to find tools for managing
- To fill some of the empty spaces
- To possess facts
- To feel cared for and understood
- To find a new kind of normal
Upward spiral of grief
In much of today’s media, we meet the misguided idea of ‘stages of bereavement’ and the idea that we have to ‘pass through’ them to ‘acceptance.’
It is our idea to replace the idea of ‘stages’ with a picture of a spiral. The ‘Upward Spiral of Grief’ allows people to accept their feelings, to accept that these feelings may come back and that grieving is long term work.
For example, if 6 months after a loss, you still feel really tearful and sad one day, you may worry that there is something wrong with you.
However, you will be in a different place to that black hole in the beginning. Your feelings will be the same, but with less intensity. You will have moved around the spiral. You have moved on and made some adjustments.
By using this spiral we can alleviate the pressure of having to move on through the stages of bereavement. It may become less frightening to revisit these feelings time and time again. It does not mean that you have gone back to the black hole in the beginning.
The idea of acceptance can also be misleading. We prefer to replace it with the word ‘adjustment.’ If we bereaved are really honest, we rarely accept the loss. We learn to live with it; we change our life accordingly. But, accept? Hardly.
There is little doubt that we do share similar feelings following a bereavement, such as shock, despair, pining, denial, anger, fear, guilt, anxiety, relief, sadness. It is comforting to know that these feelings are ‘normal.’ However, over the course of time the idea of stages has become misunderstood. Some people feel under enormous pressure to ‘pass through’ these stages in order to ‘move on’ and accept their loss. We argue that it is more realistic to think of grieving in an upward spiral.
At Grief Encounter we aim to dispel these myths and give people the freedom to say that life will never be the same.
