Children’s Grief Awareness Week resources available online at The Myton Hospices

The theme for this year’s event is ‘isolation’, so appropriate in 2020.

Dr Jo Poultney, Palliative Care Consultant at South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust says:

This year, it’s not possible to hold an event to meet families in person, but we still want to show people, support is out there. Our hope is that no child is left feeling alone in their grief.

The webpage is the combined work of a group of Warwickshire health and palliative care organisations.

We’ve created videos to share professional knowledge and demonstrate activities, helping parents and carers at a time when many services are switched off.  Our thanks go out to all the Trusts and Hospices who made the page possible. It was a true team effort. Now, we hope lots of children around the county will join in with listening to Kate’s Story Tree videos on the page – and try the other activities!

Says Charlotte Temple, Community Development Worker.

There’s a chance to get creative by taking part in the week’s ‘One More Moment’ remembrance activity. Tracey Evans, Specialist Palliative Care Nurse, explains:

Children may not have been able to express certain thoughts or feelings at the time the person was alive. Or perhaps there’s something they would have liked to have happened.  We’re encouraging children to share those thoughts now.

Children are invited to draw, write, or collage in the shape of a heart, to show what they’d do or say if they had one more moment with their special person who died. Then, they can send their heart in to Myton where it will join a creative display.

By showing the hearts for all to see, other children will get a chance to relate to these feelings expressed and not feel so alone in their thoughts - says Tracey.