Member's statement: Children’s Grief Awareness Week

Member's statement by Mr Nick Mathison on 18 November 2024.

MLA

Mr Nick Mathison

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

18 November 2024

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Children’s Grief Awareness Week

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4655664

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Today marks the start of Children's Grief Awareness Week 2024. It is an appropriate moment to reflect on the significant impact that bereavement can have on the life of children and young people. Data collection is not what it should be in this area, but it is estimated that, in the UK, by the age of 16, one in 29 children will experience the death of a parent or sibling. Those are sobering statistics. That is a child in every class, as they move through their educational journey. The impact of bereavement at that age is devastating. It is vital that the right support is available for our children, and nowhere is that more important than in our schools. Therefore, it is welcome that the policy focus of this year's Children's Grief Awareness Week is grief education, with a clear emphasis on the need for grief education to be an essential part of the curriculum from the earliest stage possible. Research shows that good grief education can act as a strong protective factor when children later experience bereavement, which has such a huge and devastating impact on their well-being. That impact affects children in specific ways. It can leave them unsure of their previously assumed safety and security in the world and often without the language to speak about it. In that context, I particularly recognise the work of Marie Curie in this policy area in Northern Ireland. This week, it will launch its report on creating compassionate school communities that have policies in place to appropriately support bereaved children. The report will have a number of recommendations and is the culmination of a long period of research and engagement with stakeholders from across a range of sectors, most notably including engagement with young people who have been directly impacted by bereavement. It is essential that we engage with those children and young people if we want to deliver effective support. I fully support the recommendations that will be announced, but I want to highlight two in particular. First, every school should have a bereavement policy in place to ensure that every child can get the support that they need in school when they are impacted by bereavement. Those policies should be embedded in schools and should generate whole-school approaches to bereavement support. All staff in the school should be familiar with the policy and should be fully equipped to deliver it effectively. Secondly, grief education should be embedded in the curriculum. Children in Northern Ireland should have a range of opportunities through their education to discuss grief and bereavement so that taboos around the subject can be broken down. Marie Curie's youth advisory panel is clear that those are vital interventions and that it is essential that, with the focus on grief education and the launch of Marie Curie's report, the Department now take forward the necessary work to deliver on the recommendations and to ensure that children and young people in our schools get the support that they need to prepare them for the impact of bereavement in their lives and to support them when they are dealing with grief and loss. I am that sure we all agree that we owe our children that.

537 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:30 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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