Throughout our lives everyone will at sometime or another experience loss, change and bereavement. This may include family breakdown, the death of a relative or friend or a stressful situation that changes an individual’s life forever. Some adverse experiences may have both immediate and longer term consequences. Grief is a human response to loss and incorporates a myriad of emotional, behavioural and cognitive manifestations. Whatever the circumstances, the death of a person is not only a loss, it is a change and a turning point: the young person’s world will never be the same again. Loss, change and bereavement may affect the mental health and wellbeing of a young person.

School communities often have to support young people who have faced or are facing loss, change or bereavement. Teachers and support staff are often the ones that the young person will turn to in such a situation. There is an increasingly wide range of resources available to support schools and professionals with the help that they may offer young people in loss, change and bereavement circumstances. There is, however, a paucity of resources that address both a proactive school approach and a reactive school approach to loss, change and bereavement that provides guidance on strategies whereby schools and professionals may help young people in such circumstances. This resource adopts such an approach.

The areas covered by this resource are:

• Young people’s understanding of grief

• Young people’s grief responses

• Young people who may need specialised professional support

• Breaking bad news

• Using the confidential record and assessment chart

• Individual assessment chart

• Meeting individual secular and religious needs

• Participating in funerals and rituals

• Secular burials and other alternative options

• Contact details for religious and secular communities

• Young people and trauma

• Young people and resilience

• Young carers

• Young refugees

• Young people and divorce

• Young people and suicide

• Young people living with a family member with dementia

• Young people in other stressful situations

• Young people with complex health needs or life-limiting conditions

• Looked after young people

• Young People who are adopted

• Young people with an imprisoned family member

• Young people with a family member in the armed forces

• Young people in travelling communities

• Case studies/exemplars

• Activities

• Professionals taking responsibility for themselves

• Managing a critical incident

• Including the topic of loss, change and bereavement across the curriculum

• Young adult fiction

• National organisations offering advice and support

• Local organisations offering advice and support.

Feedback received

“This is a good whole school resource. It gives a good insight into the many aspects of loss. The activities are well set out and easy to follow and are relevant to the type of support we offer within student welfare.”

Lindsay Butler, Neale-Wade Academy, March, Cambridgeshire

“An excellent resource. Very positive response from the young people trialling the activities. Thank you for this resource. The Promoting Resilience has been particularly helpful for adopted children, which has led to some interesting discussion.”

Janet Smith, former Practice Manager, Adoption Support, Families for Children