Does school have a role in supporting bereaved children and young people? Exploration of school belonging, social support and school-based interventions in bereaved children and young people

Abstract

One in 20 children experience a death of a parent and more experience death of a close family member or friend (Parsons et al., 2011). The experience of loss and bereavement is stressful and can be traumatic for children. For this reason, bereavement can be considered an adverse childhood experience (ACE). ACEs have a negative impact on both immediate and long-term outcomes. Therefore, it is important that children and young people receive suitable support for their grief. Schools are well placed to offer support as it is a familiar environment and interventions can be more easily accessed (e.g., no extra travel, time constraints etc.). Schoolbased interventions can be considered on three levels: primary, secondary, and tertiary, depending on type and amount of support required. Primary interventions are often wholeschool approaches, secondary and tertiary interventions occur after the bereavement. In chapter two, a systematic literature review of school-based interventions for grief was undertaken. In total 12 studies, using quantitative methods, were identified through the systematic searches. The quality of the research was varied, many studies did not include control groups or collect follow up data which impacted the overall quality of the evidence base. Interventions were organised to type and level (primary, secondary, tertiary) to synthesize data. This research showed the evidence base is limited and does not provide a clear picture of which school-based interventions are effective. Additionally, most of the research takes place in the USA making it difficult to generalise the findings to the UK educational system. Further highquality UK-based research is needed to understand what school-based interventions are suitable for bereaved CYP. Chapter three of this thesis aims to investigate the relationships of different aspects of social support and grief reactions in children and young people. Social support has been shown to support children and young people following a bereavement. However, literature provides a mixed picture of which aspects of social support are most beneficial. There was a further aim to investigate the relationship of school belonging with grief which has not previously been researched despite school belonging being identified as protective factor for other ACEs. As bereavement can be considered an ACE, children and young people are at risk of developing long-term negative consequences following bereavement, particularly if they experience prolonged grief. To investigate the aims of this research, data was collected via an internet survey, from young people and their caregiver who had recently experienced a bereavement. Findings showed both school belonging and peer support had significant associations with grief reactions. These relationships indicated the higher self-reported school belonging and peer support the lower self-reported grief reactions. Regression analysis showed a further significant association with school belonging and peer support. Surprisingly, no significant relationship was found between family support and grief reactions which contradicts previous research (e.g., Biank & Werner-Lin, 2011). This research has added to literature because it highlights the potential importance of school belonging for CYP who have experienced bereavement. However, due to the small sample size further research is needed to investigate the relationships in more depth.

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ORCID for Dennis Golm: orcid.org/0000-0002-2950-7935

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