Video transcript: Talking with traumatically bereaved children and young people

The video can be found on the 6-point support plan for schools and colleges page here.

Beck Ferarri:

Hi Nicola. Thank you for joining me today. I thought that would be really helpful for us to have a conversation from your position as a SENCO in a school.

Nicola Jackson:

As a SENCO, I do have quite a lot of questions from staff and I have my own questions really around traumatic bereavement, so this is helpful.

From the animation that I watched around Wesley and Cara, one of the things I was thinking about is how would we talk about this in school —when we’re worried and we can see a pupil is struggling?

Beck Ferrari:

That’s a really key thing and I think the first thing is: “How shall we?” which is a brilliant question rather than ‘Shall we?’ So ‘How shall we?’ and we will because it’s helpful to validate those experiences when a child or young person has already been through a bereavement that we might be considering as traumatic, we need to validate that rather than expecting them to walk around with that in their lives. But us not even being able to name that — and I know that’s really hard, you know, “I’m a teacher. I’m a T.A. I’m a pastoral support manager. I’m not sure whether I’ve got the skills with that.’ That’s about being a human being and just connecting with that child or young person and saying “I understand that this has happened and that must be really tough.” But us having the courage to name that really for them.”

Nicola Jackson:

Yeah. I can see how that’s really important but how is that different? Isn’t it really the same as talking to any other bereaved young person?

01:29 – How is it different?

Beck Ferrari:

We probably can’t clearly differentiate this child has been traumatically bereaved and this child hasn’t and therefore we need these this set of skills for this child rather than just this set of skills for a bereavement that might not be traumatic. So those same principles about acknowledging the death are really important and those same principles about although we’re worried, we’re worried about what we’re going to say and then it might sound clunky or being sensitive but us having the courage to say that because actually the child or young person is having to carry that uncertainty and they’re probably far more worried than we are about what’s happened in their life. So those things all completely stay the same. There might just be some additional things we want to do when we can see a young person is struggling.

Nicola Jackson:

Thinking about it really in the context of my role as a SENCO in a secondary school, how would we have these conversations with young people who have special educational needs? So you know, maybe a communication difficulty, autism. How would we have those difficult conversations with these children?

02:40 – Special educational needs

Beck Ferrari:

So, I guess my first thought would be that every child with a special educational need has got their own unique set of needs and strengths and therefore we can’t ever say you need to do A, B and C. I would say bring with you all the experience you’ve got of how you work with that young person usually. So, if you’ve found things that are helpful then bring those to your conversation. If you found that young person needs spoken language broken down and given a visual representation, then use that. If they need information given and shared with them repeatedly and in short bursts, then do just the same. I guess for all children and young people clear language is really helpful, particularly when they’re younger or where they have a communication need because that really can help us minimize confusion for the child and help us check in with what they’ve made sense of because that might be part of what’s keeping it being traumatic for that child. So probably clear language and then bringing all the things that you usually do with that child and their special educational needs.

Nicola Jackon:

I think in in particular maybe with young people with special needs, but generally speaking with young people who experience bereavement, I suppose the biggest question is what if they don’t want to talk?

4:02 – What if the child or young person is struggling to talk?

Beck Ferrari:

We can come up with all the here’s the school’s guide and it says here are all the things that you might be able to do, but actually there’s that key part that they might not want to talk.

So I guess I’ve got two thoughts there. One that we can still keep being a supportive trusted adult and we can keep checking in on them.

The second thing is that actually it might be more likely that a young person doesn’t want to talk if they’ve experienced a traumatic bereavement — that’s part of the trauma that they’ve experienced and they’ve got in their — those memories they’ve got in their mind. One of the key parts might be avoiding it — not wanting to think about it because it’s so painful and so hard and so scary. So us recognizing that it’s hard is actually really good information for us that we can bring to our monitoring how that young person’s getting on. We might also be able to name that for that young person. “Wesley, I can see it’s really hard for you to talk about your dad. Are you able to talk about him with anybody? Are you able to think about him at all?” So we can use that very gently, not to insist that they talk with us, but we can use that to help us understand them a little bit more.

Nicola Jackson:

I suppose as well, if they are finding it difficult, I suppose one of the biggest things is working with the family. So how would we work with the young people’s family to support them in school?

5:18 – Communicating with the family

Beck Ferarri:

It’s two things. It’s about giving the young person a safe place and a confidential space and respecting that, but equally looking for opportunities to build that communication with home because we know that what we see in school between nine and three it’s just a small part of the child’s day. How they’re managing at home is going to be really key for us to understand and work out whether our worries are well placed and actually there are worries about them at home. So I’d be thinking with Wesley: “You know, I can see that it’s a real struggle for you during the school day. Can we have a chat with mum, so I can understand what it’s like at home?” And we invite that communication and collaboration and to try and put the pieces together and help us keep that connection going.

Nicola Jackson:

How would we then support families who deal with bereavement slightly differently? How would we support families from different cultures and different backgrounds?

6:15 – Thinking about culture and beliefs

Beck Ferrari:

That’s a really important thing for you to raise Nicola because you know we need to probably come to each family as a new family without preconceptions and where families have a particular religion or faith or particular culture from their background and probably coming with an attitude of being humble rather than: “Oh I know all about this.” Helps us to say to that family or that young person: “Can you help me understand about your faith and what that might mean to you?” And the same with the family. We can just come with a little bit of curiosity rather than thinking: “I’ve read a one-page sheet about this faith or this background and therefore I know.” Because each family will also have their own way that they live their religion and the way that they live their background and the way it impacts on the way they grieve.

Nicola Jackson:

I think there’s a lot obviously to take on board here with dealing with a traumatic bereavement. I think you mentioned before about the kind of day-to-day aspects of the school so is there anything else we’d need to think about in terms of that kind of day-to-day experience for the young person?

07:24 – Day-to-day school life

Beck Ferrari:

There’ll be some things that I hope that schools can take a moment to consider. Particular topic areas, particular subjects that we can say for that the young person that might be really tough — I’m going to give them the heads up that on Thursday we’re covering this, so that we can work out with them whether they can manage that lesson or how they can manage it or what they want to do. But then of course there will be times when we’re not aware that something will have been triggering or we hadn’t realized that’s what happened to the young person and then we’re left managing the fact that their emotions may well be quite unsettled and then it’s having the courage to say, “I could see that was tough for you. What do you need right now?” But maybe taking it a little bit further. Often we’re really good at saying: “How are you feeling?” And actually, we can probably see, but I sometimes think it can be helpful to say: “What were you thinking when you got upset then? It’s just quite a simple question, but it can take our understanding from just the feeling we can see you’re upset to us understand what went through their mind. What went through your mind there. And that might really help us work out what pictures they’re holding on to of memories and what particular things about their bereavement are more tricky.

Nicola Jackson:

When I was reading through the guidance, there’s a particular phrase that that kind of piqued my interest and it talks about holding the hope. So what does that actually mean in practice?

08:47 – Holding the hope

I guess it’s about keeping a belief for the young person that even though things are really tough right now, we want to hold on to the hope and our belief that things will get better and that they can still have a future. Even though Wesley, we see him down in the well during the animation, and then we see at the end he’s sat with his PE teacher and she passes in the ball as though she’s saying: “I know you can’t do it right now, but we hope in the future we want to welcome you back to basketball.” And it’s about showing them that even though you’re in a hard place, we believe in your future and we believe that at some point you’ll be able to enjoy some of the things that you used to enjoy and live some of your life again.

Nicola Jackson:

I think that’s really fascinating. I think we do really need to use this toolkit to support us with our young people.

Beck Ferrari:

Thank you. We hope that bringing what we’ve put together in the schools toolkit, along with your experience of already knowing the child, that hopefully you can find some things that will be useful for you in your day-to-day working life at school.

Nicola Jackson:

Absolutely. Thank you.

Learn more

This video transcript is part of a set of traumatic bereavement resources, which supports schools, colleges and practitioners working with children and young people.

You can download a guidebook for schools and colleges, a clinical guide for practitioners, watch explainer videos, and learn about the research here.