Consultancy, supervision and reflective practice

Child Bereavement UK has 28 years of experience of training professionals and supporting families. Our facilitators apply the learning from this experience to support individuals, teams and organisations across the sector who work with bereaved families.

The events that Child Bereavement UK run bring professionals together; they offer staff time to reflect on their practice and importantly consider how further improvements can be achieved. These events are consistently excellent. It's a pleasure to work with an organisation that is totally committed to the children, young people, and families that it serves.

Kath Evans, Director of Children's Nursing, Barts Health NHS Trust

Consultancy

We offer a broad range of support to organisations in the statutory, voluntary and corporate sectors on all aspect of bereavement, including:

Developing or reviewing organisational strategy for senior leadership teams and Trustees
Establishment of bereavement support posts and the development or expansion of bereavement services, including associated policies and procedures
Information on developing a bereavement strategy within schools and businesses, or a bereavement care pathway within hospitals and children’s palliative care services
Helping organisations work with bereaved families to inform strategy and service development
External evaluation of current service provision to inform future development and provide evidence for funders

I just wanted to say a huge thank you for yesterday. The day was fantastic from start to finish and I can’t over emphasise the impact it has had!

Our flip chart is now full of ideas all informed by the consultation, the discussions focused our vision. I’m so fortunate anyway to work with such an enthusiastic team but the team I came into this morning were even happier, more confident and raring to go!

They felt that listening to the wealth of experience and knowledge that the Child Bereavement UK team bring but also learning that a large charity had to grow and learn along the way was invaluable.

Supervision

Supervision is regarded as a vital core activity for practitioners working with bereaved families, ensuring the delivery of safe, effective and high-quality services.

Supervision has been defined as ‘when people who work in the helping professions make a formal arrangement to think with another or others about their work with a view to providing the best possible service to clients, enhancing their own personal and professional development, and gaining support in relation to the emotional demands of the work’. (Scaife, 2009)

Management supervision is carried out within an organisation through line management structures. However, organisations are increasingly looking externally for supervision that addresses the content or impact of the work.

Child Bereavement UK can provide the following types of supervision in relation to the content and impact of working with bereaved parents, children and families, face-to-face, by telephone or online.

Supervision on an ongoing basis to individuals at any level in an organisation
Supervision on an ongoing basis to teams/groups of staff or volunteers

The supervision we receive is an essential service for West London Sands Befrienders in terms of understanding and improving the service we offer to parents, also in providing the support we ourselves need. We are very pleased with the supervision we have commissioned, which is of a high standard.

West London Sands

Reflective practice sessions

It is recognised that the nature of bereavement work is likely to have an emotional impact upon practitioners. Reflective practice affords an opportunity to think about or reflect on particular situations, and develop insights and learning from experiences in a safe space.

Child Bereavement UK can provide reflective practice sessions for teams or organisations. The main objective of these sessions is to ensure that all staff feel supported and equipped to manage their bereavement-related work and the impact it can have, with the aim to enable participants to:

talk together about the impact the work is having upon them
learn and develop together as a team
support each other to share concerns, dilemmas and experiences and support one another to find their own individual solutions
promote positive team dynamics through sharing

An excellent opportunity to reflect on our work and to consider ways to look after ourselves.

Social Worker

Contact us

[email protected]

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Telling a child that someone has died

It is important to tell a child of any age when someone important in their lives has died, and ideally this is done by someone who is closest to them.
Supporting bereaved children and young people

Children and young people grieve just as much as adults but they show it in different ways. Find out how you can help them and more about child grieving.
Grieving for a child of any age

The agony of losing a child of any age is unparalleled. There is no age or point in time that makes it any easier. No parent expects to face the death of their child and no grandparent expects to lose their grandchild.
When a grandparent dies

The death of a grandparent is often a child or young person’s first encounter with the death of someone important. Parents have a great deal to manage when their own parent or carer dies. There is the grief associated with their own loss, but also the reactions and responses of their children to the death of a grandparent.
Children's understanding of death at different ages

Guidance on children's understanding of death at different ages and stages of development.
Child Bereavement UK training

Child Bereavement UK designs and delivers training for professionals in health and social care, education, the emergency services and the voluntary and corporate sectors, equipping them to provide the best possible care to bereaved families.
Children's understanding of death at different ages

Babies and young children have no understanding of the concept of death yet, long before they are able to talk, babies are likely to react to upset and changes in their environment brought about by the absence of a significant person.
Contact us

Contact details for our Helpline, departments and services.
When your baby dies

When a baby lives only a short time or dies before birth due to miscarriage, stillbirth or a painful decision to end the pregnancy, people may assume that the loss is not important. This is simply not the case.
UK death & bereavement statistics

A parent of children under 18 dies every 22 minutes in the UK; around 23,600 a year. This equates to around 111 children being bereaved of a parent every day.