The importance of understanding bereavement in schools
Many teachers have told us they wish they had been better prepared when they experience a death in the school community. To support schools we have developed a free Bereavement Resource which you can find in our Resources page (LINK).
Young people can find it very difficult to ask for help after a bereavement, so knowing what help is available and how to enable children and students to get appropriate help is important for schools.
It is not always the loss of a loved one through death that bereavement occurs. Divorce, separation and moving away to a new location can also cause feelings of grief and loss.
It is important for young people to be informed about bereavement. Schools can help prepare pupils for their own future experiences of loss, good education can help dispel myths and taboos, and help children to know how to support their peers.
Grief is a very personal experience, every child and young person will experience it in a different way. Frustration, anger and instability are widespread reactions, and this can lead to changes in behaviour in class. Teachers and educators can be far more comfortable knowing how to support a pupil experiencing grief, and can manage challenging behaviour more productively.
In her paper Child Bereavement: What School Psychologists Need To Know. Huda Ayyash-Abdo explains that silencing the subject of death at home and at school, leads to children experiencing “pain, isolation, distress and at times dysfunctional manifestations of grief”. Left to their own devices, unhealthy grieving in children and young people has a detrimental effect on them. School psychologists may not have the time to provide the ongoing support to every bereaved student and their family, sometimes additional support is needed.
Integrating death and bereavement education into the curriculum can help children to develop a realistic and healthy attitude towards death and loss, be more sensitive to the grief of others and develop more effective coping strategies of their own. Education around death and loss is a better preventative measure for future problems.
Teachers and educators may need to understand their own grief and loss, and feel better prepared to support their colleagues too. The pandemic has caused a much greater need in schools to be more aware of grief, loss and bereavement not only in the pupils but also for staff. In response to this we have developed a free Bereavement Resource
which you can find in our Resources page.
This resource has been developed in collaboration with Rainbows Bereavement Support GB, Grief Encounter and World Wide Motion Pictures Corporation. This resource will also give you some more awareness into the different cultural rituals and rites around bereavement.
Rainbows Bereavement Support Great Britain, is a well respected national charity having a proven, positive impact on the lives of children, young people and adults. Their vision is quite simply for every child and young person in every school in Great Britain, grieving a significant and often devastating loss in their lives, to be understood and supported appropriately.
Grief Encounter is a charity set up to help with the confusion, fear, loneliness and pain, providing a lifeline to children and young people to cope with free, immediate, one-to-one
support. They work closely with schools nationwide to ensure all students have someone to turn to following bereavement.
World Wide Motion Pictures Corporation worked with us to organise a screening of their film Emu Runner to help raise awareness of the different ways that a child can manage their grieving. It tells the story of an 8-year-old indigenous Australian girl dealing with her mother’s death by forging a bond with a wild emu and helping her deal with her grief. We hope this heart warming family film will not only educate but motivate you to learn more about issues around bereavement and the cultural differences that can add further challenges.
We hope you enjoy the film and find our resource useful.
Steve Sinnott • June 25, 2021
This week while out and about in Hertfordshire and we visited the British Schools Museum. We discovered the first school opened by Joseph Lancaster, was known as the ‘Poor Childs Friend”, was in 1810. It was his lifelong mission that all children regardless of their circumstances, should benefit from an education. Apparently, Joseph heard a small girl say, “Oh that I could read!” and this inspired him to create a simple education system that eventually would benefit children across the world. Joseph was the tenth son of a poor man himself from South London. His aim was to offer free education for everyone. However, it would be 93 years before the U.K. government finally made education free for all. There are still many countries today where education is still not free to access and it is certainly not compulsory for primary and secondary age pupils. Joseph’s mission really resonates with that of the Foundation, to support access to education for all. We enjoyed our visit and appreciated the tour given by two of the Museum’s volunteers, Angela and Clare. They described some of the challenges faced in the early years of formal education and shared some of the rules that teachers and students had to abide by with us.
Sparks Bristol is a collaborative community project initially envisioned by The Global Goals Centre, (GGC) more of which below. A few years ago, GGC took over an empty Marks and Spencer store and that’s how Sparks was born. Sparks is a department store with a difference, co-created by Global Goals Centre and Artspace Lifespace. On the ground floor is a huge range of shops, installations, events and more. Upstairs is a hub for local artists, it offers affordable studios as well as rehearsal and performance space. The Global Goals Centre is a Bristol-based educational charity inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals. (SDGs). GGC believe the SDG’s or Global Goals as they are sometimes known, can be reached, with imaginative solutions and widespread education and engagement. They work with partners to promote creative solutions and deliver ground breaking projects that work towards these ambitious goals. The Steve Sinnott Foundation supported the Global Goals Centre with seed funding when it first started over 5 years ago. This month we went to visit them to see how they are getting on and we were taken aback by the volume of work they have achieved since they started. It is amazing to see how though working together with other local community groups it has grown into the vibrant centre it is today. All of the creative projects they host are linked to the SDGs. They cover topics that tackle poverty, education, climate change, fashion recycling and upcycling, to name a few.
Spring is definitely here, daffodils, blossom and crocuses are all basking in the bright sunshine. There is still a chill in the air in the shade but it's happening and all the seeds that were sown over the last few months are coming to fruition. At the Foundation, we have been planning the year ahead and our Positive Periods and Prevention of Gender Based Violence programmes got underway this weekend in Haiti and Ghana. These projects will have a long-lasting effect on the lives of the women and girls who take part: tackling the root causes of gender-based violence and enabling girls to attend school every day when they have their period, to feel safe at school and know how to take action when they are faced with violence. These are the first of many projects planned for the year ahead as we continue to work towards Education for All children everywhere.
