This programme ran between 2020-2024 and focused on bereavement information and support for young people in educational settings in Northern Ireland.
Compassionate Schools Communities report
The Schools Bereavement Programme produced a significant body of work which has culminated in the Compassionate School Communities report, which looks at grief education and bereavement support as two distinct but connected elements of support for pupils.
Recommendations
The report provides five key recommendations to improve bereavement support in schools, based on the experiences of pupils, teachers and parents/guardians:
- Strengthen Department of Education-led education policy guidance and support.
- Require every school in Northern Ireland to have a bereavement policy.
- Give all teaching staff a range of opportunities to receive bereavement training.
- Ensure the education curriculum offers a range of opportunities for pupils to discuss bereavement and grief.
- The Health and Education sectors should build on good practice by identifying all opportunities for collaboration that would strengthen wider societal understanding of how children experience grief and how to support them.
Programme Board and Youth Advisory Group
The programme was supported by a Programme Board made up of Marie Curie staff, Cruse, PHA, the Education Authority, a bereavement counsellor, primary and post-primary teaching staff, Childhood Bereavement Network staff, parents and young people – some of whom have experience of bereavement.
The Young Person Advisory Group ensured the views of children and young people remained central to all phases of the programme. The group included young people who felt passionately about schools doing more to prepare and support young people. The group included representatives from the Secondary Schools Students Union (SSUNI), the Cancer Fund for Children (CFFC) and CRUSE.
The young people have been working with an art therapist over the last number of months and have used the medium of arts and crafts to start expressing bereavement and the feelings and experiences connected to it.
