The circle of life

Any child who has seen the Lion King film understands the circle of life - we’re born, we grow up and we die. A straightforward concept in principle, but for many children, the end of life has become shrouded in mystery.  

Once upon a time, it was commonplace for the whole family to be with a loved one at the end of their time on this mortal coil, or to see a body laid out ahead of the formalities of a funeral. That social ceremony provided many opportunities to talk about the process of death and dying, but in modern times it has become increasingly rare to discuss death, especially with children.

Developing education programmes

As a former palliative care social worker, Dr Sally Paul, of the University of Strathclyde's Social Work & Social Policy department, already knew that avenues for children to talk about death, and their feelings when someone dies, were limited. Yet research (Paul & Vaswani, 2020) indicates that more than half of all children in Scotland have experienced bereavement by the time they are eight years old, and a profoundly important educational and support gap exists.

Sally used that insight to work in partnership with staff and children at schools in the Forth Valley to develop a loss and grief education programme for nine to 12-year-olds, a school’s bereavement policy and bereavement training for staff, with support from Strathcarron Hospice and Edinburgh University.

These practices continue within the existing schools but, for Sally, it’s vital that they are rolled out more widely. Children and young people need age-appropriate opportunities to be included in education and support about death and loss so that they are prepared for life. Her research found that such opportunities exist within Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, but that they are not explicit and many staff may lack the confidence to engage children in such learning.

And that confidence-building is important - death, after all, is not something most of us talk about openly and comfortably. That contemporary reticence extends to open conversations with children about death and loss. Of course, social convention is usually well-intentioned - worrying about upsetting a child comes from a good place - but shutting down those conversations (or avoiding them completely) can mean that children are badly prepared when someone they care about dies.

European Learning Network

Working with colleagues at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Sally established a European Learning Network to share knowledge about supporting school communities to recognise and respond to death and bereavement.

The Compassionate Schools: A How To guide has since been published in multiple languages. Closer to home, Sally’s work has informed the development of a Bereavement Charter Mark for Primary schools, which is now being piloted across Scotland. A further objective from the work is to stimulate a wider discussion about how schools can deliver end of life education AND be more responsive to children’s experience of illness, death and bereavement.

For Sally, the best thing about her work is that it goes far beyond pure research. This is applied work which builds on the voices and wishes of children and young people to encourage open conversation and useful learning about one of life’s most difficult subjects.