Suggestions for the ideal follow-up for bereaved students as seen by school personnel |
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| Authors: | Kari Dyregrov Mathilde Endsjø Thormod Idsøe Atle Dyregrov |
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| Institution: | 1. The Grief Center, Center for Crisis Psychology, Bergen, Norway;2. Centre for Evidence Based Practice, Bergen University College, Bergen, Norwaykari@krisepsyk.no;4. Professional Studies in Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway;5. Center for Behavioral Research, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway |
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| Abstract: | Little is known about how teachers and head teachers (school personnel) attend to children experiencing grief. Our aim was to investigate what the school personnel perceive to be optimal help from the school in such situations. We conducted seven focus group interviews and one single interview among 17 teachers and 5 head teachers from primary and secondary schools. Although the school personnel obviously have high levels of empathy and commitment towards grieving students, they expressed limited knowledge about how child bereavement affects school performance, concentration, and learning, and how this restricted their own efforts to arrange for grieving children during the school day. They also signalled tensions created by the need to mediate too many tasks in the teacher’s role, school staff’s lack of grief knowledge, and guilt for not doing more for bereaved children at school. Despite the existence of solid theoretical and research base in the field of grief in children, opportunities for provision of evidence-validated intervention by teachers and other school personnel in response to grief, and prompt referral of bereaved children suffering more complex grief reactions, appear to be severely compromised. The school personnel pointed out the necessities for action plans and written routines, resources and clarifications of roles, and some basic help principles, key help measures, and improvements to improve the support for bereaved schoolchildren. |
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| Keywords: | grief in students perspectives of school personnel school intervention |
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