Health and Wellbeing
The Profound Impact of Grief – An Introduction to Grief and Children with PMLD
Recognise grief in a child with PMLD who can't tell you they're hurting, and support them with honest words and sensory activities.
- 1 hour
- 6 modules
- 1 CPD hour
- Certificate
Members
14 days free, then £70 a year or £7 a month.
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If you need help now
- If someone is in danger, call 999.
- For urgent mental health help, call NHS 111.
- Samaritans: call 116 123, any time.
- Shout: text SHOUT to 85258.
- Childline (for children and young people): 0800 1111.
- Papyrus HOPELINEUK (suicide, under 35s): 0800 068 4141.
What you'll learn
- Recognise grief in changes to a child's behaviour, body language and breathing
- Talk about death using clear words, backed by photos and objects of reference
- Explain everyday losses, like a staff member leaving, before they cause confusion
- Plan sensory activities that help a grieving child release, remember and understand
- Teach life and death across the curriculum, including the full life cycle
About this course
Children with profound and multiple learning disabilities grieve like anyone else, but they're the group most often left out of bereavement support. Their grief can show as a change in breathing, a lost skill or a behaviour put down to their disability. And it doesn't only follow a death: the passenger assistant who stops appearing one morning is a loss too.
You'll learn to read those signs, and to talk about death with real words ('dead', not 'passed away') backed up by photos, objects of reference and the child's own AAC. You'll build a toolkit of sensory activities, from memory boxes to friendship bracelets for everyone still in their life. And you'll find ways to teach the whole life cycle across the curriculum, so the lesson doesn't end with the butterfly.
It's taught by a former special school deputy head who is researching how non-verbal children express grief.
- For early career teachers, mental health leads and 2 other roles. Special.
6 modules
Open in order
- 7 min
Introduction
- 14 min
What is grief?
- 10 min
Grief – it’s not just about death
- 12 min
How do children with PMLD communicate grief?
- 14 min
Supporting grieving individuals who have PMLD – ethos and activities
- 6 min
Wrap up