Supporting, caring for and working with bereaved children is both daunting and challenging, yet not much is known about how schools can help children to cope with death and dying. The main objective of this study was to identify approaches used to support children who are grieving, and to explore implications for teachers. The use of retrospective…

The number of children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions in England is double what it was at the millennium. These conditions include cystic fibrosis, cancer, organ failure and severe neurological injuries. The Teaching for Life project aimed to explore the needs of teachers working in English schools in relation to working with…

Children experience grief and loss from death, divorce, parental incarceration, and similar situations of being placed in foster care or adoption. These youths may be challenged in recovery due to lacking the necessary life experience and coping skills. They may also lack the appropriate support networks to work through their grief as their…

The first conversation of a family about a family death is a neglected but potentially important topic. In a first conversation in James Agee's (1957/2006) novel "A Death in the Family," the member who knows the most about the accidental death of another member discloses information selectively. The first conversation in Agee's novel suggests that…

This research examined how various members of a social network interact with the Facebook (FB) profile page of a friend who has died. From 43 in-depth qualitative interviews, FB friends of deceased FB users maintained their FB connection with the deceased. Most participants who visited the profile found it helpful to look at pictures; a few wrote…

This article investigates the online information practices of persons grieving and mourning via Facebook. It examines how, or whether, these practices and Facebook's terms of use policies have implications for the bereaved and/or the memory of the deceased. To explore these questions, we compared traditional publicly recorded asynchronous…

Background: Self-directed multimedia resources that provide psycho-educational information to selected populations have been supported in child health related areas including parenting skills in adults and literacy in children. Comparable programs for use with bereaved children and families have not been adequately developed or empirically…

This article draws on interviews with women who experienced the death of their mothers during early childhood to explore the grieving process of a child for a lost parent. The author describes the women's recollections of how the loss was talked about, or not, in their families and how this impacted the women's mourning and coping. Most women who…

Specialists in death, dying, and bereavement and their consequences for individuals, families, and communities have experience and research findings that are relevant to an understanding of the reactions of individuals faced by deadly violence. At such times, powerful emotions and ingrained patterns of thought and behavior can given rise to…

This qualitative study examined messages of everyday communication (small talk and routine interactions). The importance of these messages was highlighted in light of their role in creating structure, safety, and meaning making in the family at the end of life. In addition, family rituals that developed from children's everyday communication were…

This article explores the relational learning model for teaching clinical social work practice. Evaluations of a course on loss, grief, and death illustrate that relational learning methods enhanced students' relational and communicative knowledge and skills, and contributed to a transformative learning process. Relational learning is a method of…

Previous research suggests that caregivers and terminally ill patients face substantial difficulties discussing illness and death. Existing research, however, has focused primarily on the experience of patients. The current study compared responses as well as the relative strength of association between mortality communication, fear of death, and…

Background: Formal training in dealing with death and dying issues is not a standard content area in communication sciences and disorders programmes' curricula. At the same time, it cannot be presumed that pre-professional students' personal background equips them to deal with these issues. Aim: To investigate the perceptions of pre-professional…

Student nurses are involved in caring for patients who are actively dying or who have been told they have a terminal illness and are faced with the process of dying. Students encounter these patients in hospitals, nursing homes, at home or in hospice care settings. According to Robinson (2004), "nurses are the healthcare providers that are most…

The experience of bereavement by parental suicide is not well understood, as evidenced by the lack of empirically supported interventions for this underserved population. This article reviews quantitative and qualitative research on the psychopathological outcomes and thematic characteristics of childhood and adolescent suicide survivorship and…