Children's Grief Awareness Week

Welcome to the sector hub for Children’s Grief Awareness Week - 18 - 24 November 2024.

This year, the Week's theme is #BuildingHope.

We know that so many of you work with children and young people and their families, building their resilience, acknowledging their feelings and offering strategies and tools to support them with their bereavement. This year, we want to highlight and amplify that work, so we are suggesting that services engage with our #BuildingHope Box activity.

You can find out more about our #BuildingHope Box activity below. We believe that this will be an extension of the work that you already do. It might be that you already have something very similar to this as part of your regular activities. If so, tell us! We want to see examples of your work and the #BuildingHope Boxes that children and young people make or develop across social media during the Week.

Get ready to share your activities using the following tags from 18 November 2024:

#CGAW24

#BuildingHope

#BuildingHope Box making session

What is a #BuildingHope Box?

This can be whatever the bereaved child or young person wants it to be:

A cardboard box?
A envelope?
A favourite book that you feel calm and cosy when you read it (you can put extra paper resources in the book)?
An online list on your phone?
An online music list, full of your songs that lift and support you?
A private social media space, just for you, that contains photos, quotes, videos?
A sports team? (Who would be your #TeamofHope? How would they know?)

Our good friends at Papyrus, who work to support young people who may be feeling suicidal, have developed both a HopeBox and a HopeBook. Both ideas are brilliant ways of #BuildingHope, and can be used as a model for your own session to support bereaved children and young people.

For schools and other organisations that support bereaved children and young people - build your own #BuildingHope box

We are asking services to support their CYP to construct a #BuildingHope Box, but this can be extending to educational settings and other organisations that support bereaved children and young people too.

Where are all your bereavement materials?
Are they in one place? This could be a physical place or it could be a virtual space.
Do you have information or resources that support bereaved children and young people and their families? How do you store these resources? Are they easy to find?

We are asking all settings to consider constructing your own #BuildingHope box, full of things that are useful to you: your bereavement policy, your bereavement support plans for children and young people, resources for these children and young people, information about local and national support services for all ages.

Get ready to share your #BuildingHope boxes using the following tags from 18 November 2024:

#CGAW24

#BuildingHope

Three simple things you can do to support a bereaved child or young person with your MP

Our policy focus: grief education

This year, the Week's policy focus is on grief education. The Government has opened a review of the Curriculum, an excellent opportunity to highlight the importance of grief education and call for grief education to be included as an essential topic. You can support a bereaved child or young person and their family, by doing one of these three simple things.

Ask your MP to join the newly formed All Party Parliamentary Group on Childhood Bereavement

This newly formed APPG will be looking closely at the issues that affect bereaved children and young people, and calling for policy change. You can find more information and a template letter to use at Winston's Wish, who provide the secretariat for the Group.

Take me to the template letter

Ask your MP to attend a debate on childhood bereavement on Monday 2 December, 4:30pm in Westminster Hall.

This debate will focus on two key issues: grief education and better data on bereavement. Any MP can attend, and you can ask your MP to attend this debate, offering support for bereaved children and young people. You can use our template letter below.

Write to your MP about the importance of grief education and why it needs to be a mandatory part of the curriculum

Research from leading experts in childhood bereavement suggests grief education should be an essential component of the curriculum, highlighting that a proactive approach can offer protective factors for children, young people, their families and wider communities (including educational settings and local communities). Recent research suggests that grief education could be a protective factor against further consequences of bereavement, including social isolation and bullying[1].

A collaboration between the Childhood Bereavement Network and Votes for Schools in November 2023 saw almost 38,000 children and young people take part in a brief sensitive and gentle introduction to grief education. 81% of primary age and 65% of secondary age pupils agreed that they would know how to support a friend[2].

The Curriculum Review closes on 22 November 2024, during Children's Grief Awareness Week.

Additionally, the importance of grief education will be debated in Parliament on Monday 2 December 2024.

This is another opportunity to highlight the importance of grief education and call on the Government to do better to support bereaved children and young people.

You can download the following template letter to write or email your local Parliamentarian, asking them to do two things:

1. Write to the Secretary of State for Education and the Chair of the Review, Professor Becky Francis CBE, highlighting the importance of grief education.

2. Attend the upcoming debate on Monday 2 December 2024, showing their support for the bereaved children and young people in their constituency.

Download the template letter

[1] Joy, C., Staniland, L., Mazzucchelli, T.G. et al. What Bereaved Children Want to Know About Death and Grief. J Child Fam Stud 33, 327–337 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-023-02694-x

[2] Votes for Schools, Vote Topic Results: Would you know how to support a friend if someone important to them died (17 – 24 November 2023) https://www.votesforschools.com/results/health-wellbeing/would-you-know-how-to-support-a-friend-if-someone-important-to-them-died/