Written from the authors' personal experience, this enlightening handbook outlines the ways in which schools can help their pupils come to terms with the death of a parent.
A child loses a parent every 22 minutes in the UK. Childhood bereavement brings with it a whole series of challenges for the children involved challenges they will deal with all their lives. The research shows teachers want to help, but don't know what to do.
This book is a start.
Written by bestselling author Ian Gilbert together with his three children, Independent Thinking on Loss is a personal account of the way educational institutions tried and succeeded, tried and failed and sometimes didn't try at all to help William, Olivia and Phoebe come to terms with the death of their mother.
Several months after their mother's death, BBC's Newsround aired a brave and still controversial programme in which four children talked about their losses. This prompted Ian and his children to sit down and think about their own experiences and draw up a 15-strong list of dos and don'ts that could help steer schools towards a better understanding of what is needed from them at such a difficult time.
This handout received such a warm reception that the family decided to expand their advice and suggestions into what has now become Independent Thinking on Loss, the proceeds of which will go to Winston's Wish, one of the UK's leading children's bereavement charities.
Independent Thinking on Loss is an updated edition of The Little Book of Bereavement for Schools (ISBN 9781845904647) and is one of a number of books in the Independent Thinking On ... series from the award-winning Independent Thinking Press.
Features and benefits:
- Encourages educators to view death and bereavement as something that can be acknowledged and talked about in school.
- Offers clear guidelines to assist schools in supporting a bereaved child in their midst.
- Outlines how conversations and actions little ones, whole-school ones, genuine ones, professional ones, personal ones in the school setting can make an awful scenario just that little bit easier for children to deal with.
Market/audience:
Suitable for anyone working with children and young people in an educational setting.
