Reaching out to the community: health promotion and support for children and young people who are bereaved and their carers

The Children’s Bereavement service, based at Strathcarron Hospice, offers group support to children and young people living in Forth Valley and North Lanarkshire who have experienced the death of someone important. It also provides group support to parents/carers of children/young people using the service. The service aims to:
• enable children/young people to meet others who have also experienced bereavement
• normalise feelings and raise self-esteem by empowering children to interact positively and talk freely about personal issues with peers - sharing and learning from each other
• educate participants and their parents/carers about alternative and healthy ways of coping.
This service has been running for 2.5 years, serving over 150 children/young people, plus their parent/carers.

The proposed presentation will focus on development of the service, including its role, remit and facilitation methods. It will discuss the challenges it has faced during the initial setting-up process and those which continue to arise in terms of providing effective bereavement support. It will make reference to the level of unmet need that exists within this area of service provision and the challenge of ensuring that children/young people experiencing bereavement receive effective and timely support in order to build resilience and aid coping.