Bereavement is a challenging issue for schools. These sites are both secular and ecclesial. They provide many suggestions for dealing with death.
Archdiocese of Toronto Bereavement Resources Resources from the Office of Formation for Discipleship. These resources explain how a parish can get started; how we can grow in our bereavement ministry and how we can grow deeper.
Bereaved Families of Ontario (BFO) Provincial Site
At Bereaved Families, we dedicate our work to bereavement support through self-help and mutual aid. Our strong community spirit mirrors the commitment made by our volunteers and staff. Our programs are facilitated by trained volunteers who are themselves bereaved. Volunteer health professionals support our facilitators and advise our programs. Each year, on behalf of Bereaved Families over 1,000 volunteers contribute to helping the healing begin. – BFO See also local sites at BFO-Halton Peel | BFO-Toronto | BFO-York Region
Bereavement (palliative.info)
Bereavement with children and parents can be a challenge for educators to deal with. Often we do not have the answers and so we have to resort to other resources for answers and assistance. This particular site offers an organization for parent who are suffering the loss of a child and looking for help with their bereavement. It provides a help network to “reinvest their lives for a positive future”
This web site deals with the stages of grief; children and bereavement; and coping with the grief process. This web site helped me to understand better what I have been going through. My mom passes away suddenly 3 years ago and it summed up nicely what I went and still going through. “At the end of mourning there is still sadness, but it is a wistful sadness that is tempered by happy memories that we still possess.”–Angelica Devito-Tassielli
Bereavement in Our Catholic Schools
Prayer Services, Tips, DVDs, picture books and other practical resources are provided to help schools respond to bereavement. –Toronto CDSB
This website offers a free helpline, resources and support for family and friends. It is a good resource for adults to use with their children. Teachers will find it helpful because it provides resources that can also be used in the classroom.–Joanne Smith
Catholic Ireland (C.I.Zine -online magazine): Children and Bereavement
The loss of a loved one can be a very traumatic experience for a child. This site provides suggestions on how to speak to children about the reality of death. It outlines some of the important things that need to be explained to a child and
provides useful information on dealing with the events surrounding a death, such as how to prepare a child to attend a visitation or a funeral. By talking with children about death in a manner appropriate for their age group, we can help them to cope better when a loved one has died.– Gail Nazareth
Catholic Health Association of Canada
The CHAC is a national Christian association concerned with health care in the tradition of the Catholic Church. Although this is a web site dealing with health care, it can also be a valuable resource for teachers interested in issues involving death, dying, grieving and bereavement, which are all part of life’s journey and the human experience. The association provides information in all aspects of health, including physical, emotional, spiritual, and social. It sets out to enhance the dignity of all people, including those who are well, sick, disabled unborn, marginalized, and dying. You can access items such as publications, resources, news releases, and position papers, which deal with many of today’s controversial issues such as abortion and euthanasia.– Sabrina Maniglia
“The Child Bereavement Trust is a national UK charity, founded in 1994. By listening to bereaved children and parents, The Child Bereavement Trust leads the way in improving the care offered by professionals to grieving families in the immediate crisis and in the many months following the death of someone important in their lives.” This website can certainly be useful to teachers, as it has been for me in helping a student in my class whose mother died this past week (and whose father died just over a year ago). This website provides people with helpful instructions on how to help a child through their grief and, it also offers information for young people to help them understand their feelings, which they can access on their own.–Deborah Reid
This particular site provides both parents and teachers a series of picture books that can be used to help children come to terms with bereavement. This site gives a list of books, particulars (publisher, ISBN numbers) and cost for the book as well as a detailed synopsis of the story. The explanations provided are clear and are indicative of the issues being introduced, such as explaining death, the grieving process, losing a friend, a sibling. The site also provides a picture of the book. –A. Bagazzoli
The Compassionate Friends assists families toward the positive resolution of grief following the death of a child of any age and to provide information to help others be supportive. The Compassionate Friends is a national nonprofit, self-help support organization that offers support to bereaved parents, grandparents and siblings. It offers grievers an opportunity to reach out to the newly bereaved and both are helped to heal. This website can be useful to teachers who are dealing with the loss of a student in their classroom. Teachers could also pass on this information to families who may be looking for assistance or support after the death of their child.–Erin Shaughnessy-Geraghty
The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families
The Dougy Center provides peer support groups for grieving children. The web site contains information for adults, schools, children and teens on coping with grief and loss. The web site contains activities for children and teens to engage in, in order to assist them in understanding and coping with grief and loss. It provides information for dealing with grieving students in the classroom and outlines the emotions a grieving child may be experiencing. This web site is useful for teachers because it provides information that can help them understand and support their grieving student. Teachers can also refer their grieving students to the web site in order to engage in the activities available on the website.–Tammy Baldin
Erin’s House A Center For Grieving Children
This website was founded to nurture the healing of grieving children and the people who live in their worlds. It is very useful for classroom teachers who have students in their class that are grieving a loss. On this website you will find some literature and guidelines useful for teachers on how to deal with grief in the classroom. Also available on this website are suggested classroom accommodations for specific grief-related behaviours. Further, it provides specific activities teachers can use within the classroom, including sympathy cards, scrapbooks, poems, memory boxes, music, etc. A great site, useful and practical.–Michelle Lamanna
Help develop your students’ social skills, emotional skills, and quality of character. These printables, lessons, and other resources will supply guidelines and advice for addressing social and emotional issues. You’ll find literature guides that deal with friendship, love, and bullying, advice on conflict-resolution, tips for talking to your students about war, death, and violence, help with understanding your students’ development and social skills, and many other cross-curricular activities to use in your classroom. From writing to math, we have plenty of resources to help you deal with your students’ social and emotional issues. – from their website. You may have to pay for some resources.
This web site has a collection of articles on types of grief, and how individuals deal with loss. Some of the main headings are: why we must grieve; pregancy loss and stillbirth; when an adolescent dies; meaningful memorial for a friend and how families mourn together. Doctors wrote these articles. I found them to have practical information that can be useful to teachers because unfortunately sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we have to deal with this issue.–Angelica Devito-Tassielli
This website offers poems, articles and memoirs for those that had died. It will also connect to support groups if one is in need of support.–Kim Nelson
This website is for a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children of all ages from preschool to teenagers as well as their families as they go through the grieving process. It is locally based in Barrie and offers various programs, general information about common characteristics of a grieving child/teen as well as a chat room for teens and a monthly newsletter.–Kelly Wagstaff
Growth House, Inc., provides resources for life-threatening illness and end of life care. It’s primary mission is to improve the quality of compassionate care for people who are dying through public education and global professional collaboration. This website includes a sections on Grief, Pain, Palliative Care, Hospice Care and Dying with Dignity, to name a few. There is a link to a bookstore as well as links to specific information for many terminal diseases (such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, heart failure, etc.)–Paula Evanoff
Helping Students Deal with Crises
These resources will help to guide you and your students through difficult times, whether that crisis involves a natural disaster, the death of a student or relative, or violence in the classroom. You’ll find tips applicable to students with exceptionalities and your average student. Read more on TeacherVision:http://www.teachervision.fen.com/crisis-intervention/teaching-methods/10157.html#ixzz2SNIhiapp Follow us:TeacherVision on Facebook
Helping Teenagers Cope with Grief
This article outlines some of the aspects that make “teenage grief” unique. It gives practical suggestions about how caring adults can help a teenager through the “grief” process and lists “signs” that might indicate that a teenager may need “extra” help. — Linda Quinn
This website provides information and advice to patients and families who are dealing with life-threatening illness. On this site, patients, families and caregivers can find general information about hospice care. It includes articles to assist patients in dealing with their illness and dying. There are several articles relating to talking to children about death and dying as well as assistance and advice for caregivers. This site also provides assistance, advice and support in bereavement. This site is very useful for teachers as it contains very informative articles discussing ways to explain death to children. These articles would be helpful to teachers in helping children to better understand death without misconceptions or confusion. It also describes developmental stages of children, religious influences, and coping strategies. This website would be very useful in helping teachers to assist students in their grieving processes.–Erin Shaughnessy-Geraghty
This is a great site for kids as well as parents and teachers that is an offshoot of the nonprofit organization GriefNet (www.griefnet.org). It offers the following: an email chat room for kids to share with kids all over the world during their journey through the grieving process, a place for children to ask questions or to view previously asked questions and the answers, how kids can help others who are grieving, a place to display and share stories and poems as well as a place of memorial for those loved ones we miss, a place for adults who wish to ask a question or view previously asked questions and the answers, information on how children grieve, good resources on the topic as well as a link for games and educational sites.–Kelly Wagstaff
This site has links that parents, teens, and kids can access. There are many useful articles that can help anyone at any age, and the articles that discuss death are very helpful. Once you type in death in this site’s search engine, many links will pop up and the site will tell you if the articles are appropriate for parents, teens, or kids. There is a good article for parents titled “How to Help Your Child Deal With Death” that provides practical information on how to assist a child with death. For kids, there is an article titled “My Pet Died: How Can I Feel Better?” which talks at the level of a child and gives them useful tips on how to deal with this situation. Teachers will definitely find this site valuable as it deals with many issues, including the death of a loved one, that children may encounter.
MedlinePlus: End of Life Issues
This website is particularly helpful for anyone seeking information of death and dying. This website deals with information from death, dying and bereavement processes. It also deals with specific issues such as: how to discuss this with children, interacting with terminally ill people and guide to the dying person. There are also other web links to other resources such as financial counselors, community directories and organizations such as support groups.–Sonia Zarpellon
Mesothelioma.net offers patients and their loved ones a wide variety of information and resources concerning coming to terms with a life ending. Whether it’s about choosing hospice care, grief counseling, or discussing end-of-life arrangements — They help clear some of the confusion and provide guidance through this difficult process.
The website, put out by the Public Broadcasting Service, is a great tool for kids to learn about a lot of aspects involved in growing up. Some topics include: friends, family, school, body, money and emotions. This link specifically sends you to the Emotions: Dealing with Death section of the webpage and offers definitions, real-life stories, advice, coping strategies, how to prepare for a loved one’s death, a section for parents & teachers, and video clips that show kids talking about their personal experiences in dealing with death. It could be beneficial to parents, teachers and students as a source of information, coping strategy, or a place for students to turn to when they need advice or comfort. This site is very colourful, easy to navigate, and full of this to see and do. — Nada Offak
Rainbows is an international non-profit organization that helps children deal with grieving and loss. Rainbows has National Chapters in Canada, USA and United Kingdom as well as other countries. On the website you can find its mission statement, history, resources and newsletter. Principles of this organization includes educating people about the number of children that suffer loss, provides training to volunteers who want to help youth, offers bereavement programs free of charge to children, inclusive to children of all races and religions. Teachers could find this website useful on helping children deal with loss as well as resources that are available to assist you in many areas.
This website is an online storybook which describes death to children. This story was written by Terry Beard and even though the graphics are very simple the story is very powerful. It seems to be a good resource to have available when teaching the younger grades. Having an online resource is a great aspect because it can help those students who enjoy the technology aspect of reading a book on the computer. Also the teacher does not have to spend any extra money to purchase the book. — Diana Sciulli
This was one of the most fantastic websites for bereavement that I have ever been on. It has so many different areas to go into that give helpful suggestions and ideas for people dealing with grief and helping others deal with their grief. They specialized in helping children up to the age of 18. There’ s a great section called “What do bereaving children need?”. It outlines how you as an educator can help. It outlines how as a school to create a “school bereavenment plan”, the steps to follow and what each person’s role is. They also have their own “charter” for bereaved children. There are so many areas with helpful suggestions and activities for everyone of all ages. There are also a number of helpful links connected to the website. They also provide resoucres as well. The only drawback is that this website is based in the UK. The most memorable section of the website was the section called “remembrance”. You click on this and you enter “Winston’s Skyscraper of Memories”. The entire screen will light up with all these stars. When you clisk on a star a person’s name appears and the name of the person they want to remeber and have named the star after. I logged in as a new member, and named a star after a friend of mine’s mom was recently died of cancer. When I showed my friend the website and the star she was over come with emotion and so touched. For children this would be so memorable, to be able to go on line and see their star when they were lonely and needed to remember that person who died.–Kelly Rignall
This website provides information regarding children and bereavement. There are articles from children who have experienced a lose of a loved one. This website provides information about the grieving process endured by children. There are articles written by young people which discuss the impact of the lose of a close person. The website provides a list of resources to be used in the study of bereavement and children.– Maria Costa-Denaro
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