Bereaved Children: Government Support
(1 day, 16 hours ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
We come to the Backbench Business debate on Government support for bereaved children. I call Christine Jardine to speak for up to 15 minutes.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government support for bereaved children.
First, I thank the Backbench Business Committee and all those who supported my application for the debate, not just on my behalf because we have the opportunity to discuss this issue, but for many thousands of children and young people in this country who feel that their voices are not heard, that they are not being listened to, and that we are not hearing what help they need in what, for some, will be the darkest times they ever experience.
I am grateful to this Government because, since they came to power, they have shown some appreciation of the problem—more than their predecessor—which is reflected in the fact that their strategy for young people mentions the need for support. However, there is so much more that needs to be done. This is an issue that affects this country on many levels: the human, the personal, the social and the economic. I will come to the economic issue later.
First, I will take a moment to explain how I came to this point and why this issue matters so much to me, and why I understand how it matters to others. My dad was just 44 when he collapsed one Saturday morning just before Christmas and died. It was a heart attack. Without any warning, our comfortable, happy, working-class family was plunged into uncertainty.
My sisters were eight and 13. Having turned 20 just the week before, I thought I was an adult; it was only years later that I came to appreciate the impact it had on me, and, indeed, on all of us. I had instantly become not just the second adult in the household, but, in reality, the second parent. When my own daughter was eight, and then again when she was 13, I struggled with watching her with her dad, realising—probably for the first time—exactly what my sisters had lost and had been through, and what my mother had dealt with.
Then—irony of ironies—when my daughter was the same age as I had been, almost to the day, her father died of a sudden, unpredicted heart attack. I saw that she was not quite an adult, and realised that neither had I been. In helping her cope, I saw yet another aspect of our family’s dynamic and challenges from a new perspective.
The moment when it came home to me that something had to be done about this on a wider scale was when I talked to my youngest sister—the one who had been eight when dad died. She asked me if I remembered that we had not had any support from any organisations—from anyone. She pointed out that that was because before he died, we had never been on the radar of social services or needed support, so at that moment they did not know that we needed it. There was no support mechanism to help mum and to discuss the sort of emotional challenges we would face, because nobody was really aware of who we were and what we needed.
In a lot of ways, it is exactly the same today. The organisations and charities are there and they want to help, but unless someone is on the radar of social services, those organisations and charities have no way of knowing who needs help, where they are and how to contact them. It is very difficult for families in distress to figure out exactly where to go and how.
It is more than three years since I first raised this issue in the House and called for a protocol or a process to identify those young people at the point of their loved one dying. There is genuinely support across House, from individual MPs and from the all-party parliamentary group on grief support and the impact of death on society. We have had debates and I have had meetings with Ministers. Everyone is supportive—it is just the action that is missing.
Too often, I have been told that schools and GPs are there to help. Yes, they are; they do a great job. However, bereavement affects every aspect of a child’s life, not just school. The campaign “Grief Matters for Children” has shown that children who are bereaved are at an increased risk of depression, anxiety and physical health problems, have lower academic attainment and are over-represented in the criminal justice system. Yes, GPs and schools are vital, but they are not there at weekends, at Christmas, during school holidays or late at night when children need someone to talk to. What if a child moves home? What if it is an estranged parent who dies, and the school does not know?
One of the main issues is that where there is support, there is huge variation in the provision of services across the UK. Services have developed in an ad hoc way, and there are inequalities in provision. Many struggle for funding, and large areas of the country are still without services that support children. Even in areas that do have a service, there are long waiting lists or travel times, and services’ survival is precarious. The pandemic made it worse: waiting lists for child bereavement services were increasing, and there were already concerns about access, which the pandemic only exacerbated. We need to do more.
That brings me back to how we know where there are children to help—the protocol and the process that I have called for. We do not collect data; we have no way of knowing. It would be simple: when someone dies, the registrar could just take a note if a child or children are affected. That would be a chance to signpost support to the family with relevant local information. We could give families the opportunity to opt in to a real-time referral pathway, similar to those for families bereaved by suicide.
Local data on the number of children and young people bereaved could be combined with activity data from local services to identify what proportion of children and young people are getting support. Data on which children and young people have been bereaved could be linked to other datasets such as those on the use of health services. The understanding of the impact of bereavement on children’s health and their futures could be much improved just by taking a note when someone dies. That knowledge of where children are, who needs help and what help they need would make such a difference.
Of course, we also need to make sure that children are getting the right help. When they were asked by the UK Commission on Bereavement what they needed, half of the bereaved children and young people who shared their experiences said that they got only a little or no support from their education setting after their bereavement. The commission recommended that all educational establishments have a bereavement policy, including staff training and a process for supporting bereaved children and their families. What a difference that would make. Winston’s Wish, the charity, led the “Ask Me” education campaign, which takes this a step further by asking all schools to sign up to a manifesto to pledge to see each bereaved student as an individual and ask the simple but powerful question, “What do you need? How do we support you?” Given the critical role that schools play in children’s lives, the fact that we already acknowledge that they do so much work, and the fact that the answer is always to turn to those schools, what are the Government doing to improve the consistency and tailoring of bereavement support in educational establishments in support of pupils’ wellbeing and learning?
Can we finally make sure that, after 20 years, grief education becomes a vital part of the national curriculum and attempts to get us over our national aversion to talking about grief? If we do not start talking about grief more openly and regularly, we will never begin to tackle the problems that it creates in society. We know that children who suffer bereavement and do not have support in coping with the trauma will likely have problems in later life. They are more likely to have difficulty forming relationships, more likely to get into trouble and more likely to live in poverty.
Various reports, including one by Sue Ryder, show that grief costs the UK economy an estimated £23 billion a year. We could help to mitigate that. We could take preventive measures that protect children and safeguard a healthy economy in the process. The situation has not been helped by the change in bereavement payments to families and the fact that they have been frozen for the past nine years. I ask the Government whether they will address that particular shortcoming. Will they fix it?
When I started to get involved in this area a few years ago, one charity that works with adults bereaved as children warned me that I might be opening a can of worms. I did not think so, but now I am not so sure. Meeting young people who faced losing someone close and felt that they did not have the support or the understanding that they needed has been both inspirational and heartbreaking—inspirational in seeing how they have coped and heartbreaking in knowing that they have lost an important emotional and economic anchor in their lives. Sometimes it is the only emotional anchor. No moment drove that home to me more than a meeting in Parliament where I met representatives of Winston’s Wish and some young people. One girl thanked me for everything I was doing and said, “But you understand, don’t you?” And I do, but I am not the only one. I also know that my sisters and I were very lucky. We may not have had the official support that we needed and that all young people deserve, but we did have support. Too many children today will face the trauma that we and hundreds of others have faced without support. An estimated 127 children go through it every day in this country. Every 20 minutes while we have been in this Chamber, someone has lost a parent.
Above all else, those children ask us to ask them what they need, and then to make sure that the authorities, ourselves included, provide it. They want us to make sure that no child in this country feels alone, unsupported or lost without the friend, sibling or parent that they have lost. I ask the Government to make sure that they get that help.
Maureen Burke (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) for securing this debate. We all know that there is no good time to be bereaved, no convenient moment to lose a loved one, and no guarantee that we are equipped to cope with loss at any time of life, but to lose a loved one as a child must surely be one of the most isolating experiences imaginable. Their friends have not encountered anything like it, and the adults in their life might not feel confident in knowing how to help them. From chairing the APPG on grief support, I know that as a society we remain woefully underequipped to handle grief among adults, let alone children who are navigating loss in childhood.
Bereavement that is left unaddressed can lead to serious problems at any time in life. For children, those problems are only magnified. It is well documented that grief that is left unresolved can lead to a pathway towards unemployment, crime, imprisonment and homelessness. If grief occurs in childhood, the effects can be lifelong and snowball into problems that can start to feel impossible to overcome.
Charities across the sector point to the lack of data as the starting point for our failure to properly support children who experience grief in childhood. We simply do not know how many children encounter bereavement. That means that we do not know where to target support or what the scale of the problem is. When support can be given, it is incumbent on all of us to encourage open, honest and frank discussions about loss. The work of charities such as Cruse and Winston’s Wish is incredible, but we should not have to rely on a postcode lottery of local organisations or the variable levels of staff training across our schools and colleges. Teachers need to know where to access dedicated support as soon as they need it, and they need training to help children when they need it the most.
There are, of course, many examples of good practice in supporting bereaved children across our schools, and I want to draw attention to the incredible work that has taken place at Oakwood primary school in my constituency. In the autumn of last year when the staff and students at Oakwood were faced with the tragic consequences of a car accident that led to the death of a classmate, they addressed the bereavement head-on, led by their incredible headteacher Vanessa Thomson. A garden of remembrance was created, and students were encouraged to speak out about their feelings with their teachers and each other. Encouraging conversation in this way and providing a dedicated space to grieve and talk about loss goes a long way to moving away from a culture of silence around death. Encouraging conversations about loss must be at the heart of any policy intervention in this area, and the work at Oakwood should act as a great example to others.
I hope that, by continuing to draw attention to the importance of supporting bereaved children through debates such as this and the work of the APPG on grief support, we can continue to improve the support available to staff, students and parents. This should start with collecting the basic data, which will enable us to get a better picture of what is needed and where.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
I would like to add my personal thanks to the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) not just for securing today’s debate but for being such a powerful champion of this cause. I came to it myself through leading a petitions debate. The hon. Member took part in it, which I really appreciated at the time.
I introduced that debate as a member of the Petitions Committee, but it opened up my own experience. As Members may know, part of preparing to open a petitions debate is meeting the petitioners. For this debate, in December 2024, the petitioners were Mark Lemon, who is leading a petition to collect data, which has been touched on, and John Adams, who is leading a petition to make bereavement part of the national curriculum. I spoke to them and they both had their own stories, just like the hon. Member for Edinburgh West and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke), who touched on some of the experiences she has heard about too. It reminded me that this can touch us in many other ways.
In my case, my dad got throat cancer when I was in my teens. He passed away when I was 20 years old. I was mostly away at university at the time, but I had a younger brother who was 15 when my father passed, and I did not really appreciate at the time just how hard it was on him. My mum was overcome with it all and he did not have the life that I subsequently was lucky enough to have. He had it hard: he was out of school and had some tough years, and he is no longer with us. Looking back, it would have made a real difference if the support that some people have, some of which has improved over the years, had been there.
There has been progress, and around the country there are many fantastic organisations. We have heard about Winston’s Wish, which took part in and supported the petition debate that I led. In my constituency, there is a charity called Stand-by-me, which has been fantastic. I met representatives at a summer fair in Knebworth, where I also met a mum and her young daughter Evie. They showed me what could be done. Evie had support from the charity and also became a young ambassador, which is about kids getting support from other kids who have been through it. That is great; however, we have already heard that that support is patchy around our country. I am really glad that there has been progress.
Of the two petitions I mentioned, the Government have listened to the first, which was about having bereavement on the national curriculum. The Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), was at the debate, took that on board and it has now happened—we now have that in the relationships, health and sex education strategy. However, it has to be implemented, so I will ask the Minister: how is that going? How are we monitoring it, are schools taking it up and are we giving the schools what they need?
On that second petition about collecting data, how can we know the problem we face if we do not know the extent of that problem? How many children are out there and, for whatever reason, they or their families are not reported through the system? How can we make it easier for that to happen? Surely it cannot be beyond the wit of man or woman to change that approach. We can do it—where there is a will, we can do it. The hon. Member for Edinburgh West made the point that there has been progress, but I ask this Government to go even further. There are kids out there who need that support and we must do all that we can, in this place and elsewhere, to provide it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) for her powerful speech introducing the debate and for all her work on this subject.
It is normal in debates in this Chamber to bring the stories of our constituents to illustrate the issue, but today I am going to share my story as well. In 2002, I had a five-month-old baby and a two-year-old toddler, and my beloved husband was diagnosed with terminal oesophageal cancer. A year later, he died, just a week before Ellie’s fourth birthday and Laura was 17 months old. You cannot explain to a baby or a four-year-old what death means. One day their parent is there, the next he is gone. I remember Laura, who had just learned to say the word “Dadda”, going round the house opening the doors, going “Dadda, Dadda”, because she could not find him. I did not really know anything about the impact of bereavement on children, but in the last 20 years, I have learned quite a lot.
In the UK, around 120 children are bereaved of a parent every day—[Interruption.]
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
The hon. Member is making a powerful speech, and we are all honoured to hear it.
Caroline Voaden
I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention.
In the UK, around 120 children are bereaved of a parent every day. By age 16, approximately one in 20 young people in the UK will have experienced the death of a parent. I became the chair of the Widowed and Young organisation and met loads of kids and their parents through that work, many of whom I am still friends with today. I saw the impact on scores of children who had lost their mum or dad. Thousands more in the UK have lost a sibling, which is also a profound grief for children, which is little understood. I saw these children grow up and adjust to their lost; the progress they made and then the setbacks; the challenges with attachment, loss, fear and abandonment; the issues with friendships and relationships; struggles with school; dangerous coping mechanisms and risk-taking in teenage years; mental health challenges; anger; intense emotions and anxiety. Just for the sake of my daughters, that is not all related to them.
While children are navigating all of that, the challenge of becoming a single parent at exactly the same moment that you are bereaved cannot be overstated, and that is compounded exponentially when the bereavement is sudden and unexpected. The day my husband died, my children came home from nursery and needed me to be the same reliable, loving, stable mum they knew—up at 7 the next day needing their breakfast, and so it went on. There is not much time to navigate your own grief in all of that.
On top of that is the loss of income. The challenge of holding down a job, bringing in a wage, while being a grieving single parent to grieving children is immense, as are the unaffordable costs of childcare that enable you to go to work at all. But in a way, I was lucky, because I was bereaved before 2017 and I received the widowed parent’s allowance—a payment that was funded by the national insurance contributions that my husband Nick had made during 20 years of full-time work, contributions designed to pay into a system that is meant to pay out when needed. He will never receive a state pension.
What difference did the widowed parent’s allowance make? It made all the difference. It allowed me to work part time. It allowed me to be present for my children, to help keep them stable while the world around them felt unsafe and scary. It made a part-time income go further. It helped pay for childcare and a few out-of-school activities so my children could live the same life as their peers. It also helped pay for the holiday clubs that they had no choice but to go to so that I could go to work —and they did not always want to.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
In 2024, my constituent Claire lost her husband—a personal tragedy. Overnight, she became the sole parent to her three-year-old son. [Interruption.] Sorry, this is personal as well. I was going to talk about me, but I am not going to talk about me. She rightly points out that the fixed 18-month limit on bereavement support payments creates a financial cliff edge for widowed parents, to which my hon. Friend has already referred. Does she, and the Minister too, agree that the grief, permanent loss of income and parenting responsibilities to all children, particularly very young children, do not end at that arbitrary 18-month period, that cut-off point, and that it should be rethought?
Caroline Voaden
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; I could not agree more.
In 2017, it all changed: the previous Conservative Government replaced the widowed parent’s allowance with the bereavement support payment—an 18-month flat-rate payment paid regardless of the child’s age. That decision drew cross-party criticism and was opposed at the time by us, the SNP and Labour MPs. It severed the historical link between national insurance contributions and long-term family protection. It created measurable disadvantage for widowed parents and bereaved children. The bereavement support payment has not been uprated since it was introduced, and it remains at 2011 figures. The very minimum we are asking for today is for the Government to uprate it in line with inflation, and I ask the Minister to respond to this call. However, I want to see the Government go further and consider calls from campaigning organisations, such as WAY, to reinstate a bereavement payment that lasts until children leave school, to iron out the disadvantage that children are under from the moment they lose a parent.
Grief does not last 18 months; bereavement lasts a lifetime, and for children it comes back again and again in huge, destabilising waves every time they reach a different stage of growth and understanding of what death really means. Believe me, you have to keep going through it again and again as they get older, explaining exactly what death means—“No, he’s not coming back”—what they did to his body, and all that stuff. It goes on right the way to adulthood. Parents navigate this through a child’s life. Adding the extra strain of financial worries on to a widowed parent makes a difficult job far harder and puts a bereaved child into an even more dangerous place.
Lucy from West Sussex is 31 and a teacher. Her husband died aged 36 from sudden adult death syndrome in January 2023—out of the blue, with no warning. Her children were nine, six and three when their dad died. She said:
“Losing one income overnight has a huge knock-on effect. Combined with rising living costs, there are times I genuinely struggled to afford food. I always made sure my children ate, but that often meant skipping meals myself or relying on the cheapest food just to get through the week. I’ve had to use food banks.
Even now those payments would still make a meaningful difference to us as a family—not as a luxury, but as support that recognises what has been lost and what continues long after the funeral.”
We know that poverty is directly linked to poorer life chances, reduced attainment in school and more vulnerability to harms, and there is a societal impact to this too. Taking it to its very extreme, there is an association between bereavement and negative outcomes, so it is perhaps unsurprising that bereavement is prevalent among people in custody. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has reported that 41% of young offenders have experienced the death of a parent as a child— a rate significantly higher than for the general population. Other research shows that up to 90% of young men aged 16 to 20 in specific institutions have suffered at least one bereavement, with many experiencing multiple traumatic losses.
As the hon. Member for Glasgow North East said, we do not do grief well in this country. It is still often something to be brushed under the carpet. I know from my personal experience that it makes people embarrassed and awkward. It is something to be avoided, not talked about. We desperately need grief education, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West said, because it could be transformational.
On top of our financial calls on the Government today, we support the Winston’s Wish “Ask Me” campaign to make nurseries, schools, colleges and universities places where grieving students feel seen, understood and supported. Right now, at least one child or young person in every classroom across the UK is grieving the death of a parent or sibling, and 72% of students who were bereaved while in education said that they had never been asked what support they need. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West said, they need to be asked, “What do you need, and how can we support you?”
I remember vividly having to go through the story of my children’s bereavement again and again with different teachers every time they moved up in school or moved to a new school, to make sure they were aware that the children had lost their dad when they were very young. I often felt that the teachers just did not understand the impact, or how the loss could manifest itself at different ages as they grew.
Emmeline told me that her brother died aged 10 after a long illness. She said:
“I was 11 and my sister was 13. We said goodbye to him in the hospital, but it didn’t feel real, and when he died, we had so many unanswered questions that we didn’t feel able to ask for fear of upsetting our already grief-stricken parents. Although family members, teachers and our friends were kind to us, we weren’t offered counselling or professional support—I doubt it existed then—but in hindsight, this was something we really needed.
I had struggled with the grief for years and as an adult sought counselling to unravel those feelings, to learn how to cope with them when they resurfaced and understand the impact losing my brother had on me.”
The hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) referred to that in his very powerful speech.
“I am sure had this help been available when I was younger, I would have been able to express my grief more openly and come to terms with it much earlier.
I can completely see how losing a close family member could negatively change the course of a child’s life and in some cases, impact society itself.”
For people who work with children as teachers, care workers, youth leaders or wellbeing professionals, understanding developmental grief is essential. Grief is not rare; it is a common childhood experience that shapes how children see themselves and the world. I know that we are asking a lot of schools at the moment, with big changes on the horizon once again, but it is a small but absolutely fundamental ask of nurseries and schools to take the time to understand how grief affects children and how they can be supported. Schools must have the tools to signpost families to support organisations.
I absolutely agree with the calls for data to be collected on how many children have suffered such bereavements, which could be done through registrar offices. Until we understand the problem, we cannot begin to fix it. I was going to ask the Minister to talk to the Department for Education—I was not sure who would respond to the debate—but he is from the Department for Education. Can we discuss how to implement better understanding of developmental grief across the education lifetime, and find a way to collect data through registrar services? Will he talk with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions about uprating bereavement support payments in line with inflation, and begin the conversation about reinstating a bereavement payment that lasts until children leave school, in order to give them the best chance of overcoming the impact of the death of a parent?
Bereavement is a long, complicated and difficult journey. Members can see that, even after 23 years, it is still very, very real for me. Adding financial hardship to that journey is unjust and discriminatory, and it is time that it ended.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
May I say what a privilege it has been to be part of this debate, and how much I admire all those who have spoken about their personal stories? I do not underestimate for a second how difficult it is, but suffering a catastrophic event and trying to make other people’s lives better is about the most admirable thing someone can do.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) on securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for putting it in place. She is so self-evidently right in what she says: there needs to be a general strategy, and we need data to be made available. It is worth thinking about why those things have not happened to date, and making suggestions about how we can overcome those barriers in future.
Governments have historically been bad at cross-departmental data collection, as we know. That has been grappled with over time, but there has been no clear solution to date. I have seen such working function more effectively on occasion, such as in cross-departmental working committees on something specific. I offer that up to the Minister as a suggestion that might work. For example, in recent years there have been changes to implement a “no wrong door” policy on reporting a death. That took a lot of time. Previously, when reporting a death, as I am sure many in this Chamber have unfortunately had to do, people had to go to multiple Government Departments before the death could be recognised. That has been changed for the better, and I hope that something similar could be adopted in this case.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke), whose APPG does incredible work on these matters, mentioned good practice in schools. We should think about how to collate it more systematically. We are quite effective when it comes to education policy, through the Education Endowment Foundation, which picks up what works from an academic perspective and shares good practice among schools. By and large, that is missing in the special educational needs and disabilities space, but it is also missing here. We have heard about good practice, which I am sure exists up and down the country—the hon. Lady mentioned Oakwood primary school—but there is nowhere to share it effectively. Will the Department think about how to take that forward? I am sure that there will be guidance, and I am just as sure that it could be made better.
On overall data collection, when a death is reported, it is linked to one individual rather than to a wider database. Change will need to be made on that, and the referral to the pathway is critical, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh West said. She also mentioned that that now happens in cases of suicide. I hope the Minister will take that up today, because we have seen that it can work. It may take time, and I think we all acknowledge that government is difficult—it is not easy to wrangle different Departments together—but that could definitely be taken forward.
Before preparing for this debate, I had not realised what the figures are for the outcomes for bereaved children, and I was quite shocked. If we have not gone through this catastrophic event, it is too easy to overlook the impact it has on young people. The statistic that the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) gave about the number of offenders who have suffered a bereavement was shocking. I hope and believe that this will be even more grist to the mill for the Education Minister to try to deal with this, because it is one of many areas across Government where early intervention—helping people—is not only the right thing to do but will benefit us and wider society.
What we have heard today is that many children who go through this have amazing families—we have some examples of those amazing families here today—and they have people around them who will support them, help them and do whatever they can to ameliorate this catastrophic incident. But that is not true of every family. Of course, the state will miss things, but if we can set up a system that minimises the impact of this catastrophic event on young people, that is the right thing to do.
I am very grateful to be part of this House today. It is these types of debate that take place in a relatively empty Chamber on a Thursday afternoon that can really make a difference to young people across the country. We have a very good Minister here, and I am sure he is about to tell us how he is going to sort this all out after many years. I commend the many voices who have spoken up today, and I am grateful to have been here for it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)
It is a pleasure to respond on behalf of the Government to such a constructive and heartfelt debate. I thank everybody for their contributions, and I particularly thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) for securing it and for her opening speech, in which she reflected not only her own personal experience but her long-standing efforts to champion these issues on behalf of so many children and families outside this place. This House is better for it.
I will turn to a few of the contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) highlighted the brilliant work being done by Vanessa Thomson and her team at Oakwood primary school in her constituency, which reflects the importance of what happens in classrooms and the essential role that teachers play. I will say a bit more about that later.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) spoke about his experience of meeting petitioners Mark and John and the power of people sharing their experiences, which is probably the thing I will take away from this debate more than anything. He also shared his very painful experience of losing his younger brother. I am sure that his brother would be very proud of him, hearing the speech he gave today.
Finally, the hon. Member—my hon. Friend—for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) talked about her personal experience and those of her children, and in particular the long tail of the effect on families of losing a loved one, needing to navigate that alone and the isolation that must come from that. The point that she made on bereavement support was valid and well made. That is not within my gift as a Minister at the Department for Education, but I would be very happy to facilitate a meeting with the Minister who is responsible for those issues.
As we have heard, bereavement cuts across all our lives and is something that we will all experience—it is universal. Responsibility for bereavement crosses boundaries between Departments, and I am pleased to be responding to the debate on behalf of the Government as the Minister for Children and Families. Grief comes to all of us, although we experience it uniquely and at different times. Loss can be particularly hard for children. It is therefore vital that young people are helped and have someone to turn to for support when they need it.
Given my role as a Minister at the Department for Education, I will start and focus most on the role of schools, where the Government have taken important steps to support bereaved children. On 15 July last year, we published revised relationships, sex and health education curriculum guidance, with a focus on supporting young people to develop resilience and to live healthy, full lives. During the consultation process, we heard that the RSHE curriculum should do more to recognise bereavement. We have listened carefully, including to many of the organisations referenced by Members today. As a result, for the first time, the guidance contains new content about coping strategies for dealing with issues such as anxiety, and specifically covers issues such as loneliness and bereavement.
As a society, we should become more open to discussing loss, as Members have said, and the guidance is an important step towards opening up that conversation with our young people in a sensitive and early way. Teachers can also draw on a wide range of external expertise and resources to help tailor their lessons. I want to express my gratitude to organisations such as the Anna Freud Centre and the National Association of Funeral Directors that provide invaluable support to children and young people coping with loss and bereavement.
In developing the guidance, we worked closely with experts on childhood bereavement, including the Childhood Bereavement Network. I am extremely grateful for its help, as well as that of all the other organisations and individuals who contributed to the guidance. I also want to thank individuals including Caroline Booth, who my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden) drew to my attention.
Schools can choose to adopt the revised RSHE statutory guidance now and, in response to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage, will be required to teach the new content from September this year. The roll-out of the new guidance has been supported by many of the organisations that helped to develop it, which are working on quality materials for teachers to use in our schools. Schools also have a wider role to play in supporting the resilience and mental health of children and young people. That is why we have made mental wellbeing, as well as health education, compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools.
Pupils should be aware that change and loss, including bereavement, can provoke a range of feelings, that grief is a natural response to bereavement, and that everyone grieves differently. Pupils are taught how to recognise and talk about their emotions, including having a varied vocabulary of words to use when talking about their own and others’ feelings, and how to judge whether what they are feeling and how they are behaving is appropriate and proportionate. Pupils are taught to discuss their feelings with an adult and seek support. They are taught where and how to seek support, including whom in school they should speak to if they are worried about their own or someone else’s mental wellbeing or ability to control their emotions. The Government are committed to improving mental health support for all children and young people, and will provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school by expanding mental health support teams, so that every child and young person has access to early support to address problems before they escalate.
Of course, for whatever reason, young people may not always want to access support at school, so it is important to look for ways to better help young people to access alternative sources of support, including the fantastic support available in the charitable sector. Members have mentioned a number of organisations, which I congratulate on the work that they do across the country. To name just two that have not so far been mentioned, officials in my Department recently met representatives of Scotty’s Little Soldiers, which provides support to children and families of the armed services, and Sibling Support, a UK-wide charity providing critical help to children who suffer the heartbreaking loss of a sibling. Last year, we added new links to key gov.uk pages for those who have suffered a bereavement that previously included no reference to children. I thank the Childhood Bereavement Network for its support, with the Department, in ensuring that that happened.
The shadow Education Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), mentioned the importance of cross-Government working. We have continued to ensure that consideration of children remains a priority for the cross-Government bereavement working group, which is chaired by the Department of Health and Social Care and takes its membership from a broad range of Departments. The group meets quarterly and continues to consider options for improving services for all bereaved people, including bereaved children.
The group was formed following the UK Commission on Bereavement report in 2022, “Bereavement is Everyone’s Business”. In November 2025, the UKCB steering group, including members from the Childhood Bereavement Network, attended a meeting of the cross-Government bereavement working group to share progress on its report’s recommendations and discuss further work. Furthermore, during National Grief Awareness Week in December, Baroness Merron attended the annual meeting of the UKCB commissioners, which was chaired by the now Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, to discuss progress on implementing the report’s recommendations and hear from adults and children with direct experience.
In summary, bereavement will come to all of us—very sadly, for some it will be when they are still young and figuring out the world. I know that all those who have spoken today and the many experts and charities working in this area share a commitment to ensuring that every child is aware of and able to access the support that they need to navigate some of the most difficult times that they will ever experience. I thank everyone for contributing to the debate, and for being prepared to share very personal and moving stories; I hope they feel that everyone in the Chamber was willing them on to do so. Again, I pay tribute and give deep thanks to the hon. Member for Edinburgh West for her passion and her continued campaigning in this area. I look forward to working with her in the future to make progress in this essential field.
Christine Jardine
I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate and spoken so movingly and powerfully about their own experiences and the experiences of those they have spoken to. I also thank the Minister for laying out the steps that the Government are already taking to move towards the better understanding and support that we have all talked about.
If I may say so, I think the shadow Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), summed the debate up best. It is on occasions like this, when there are no party divisions and we talk to one another as individuals about a problem that affects us all and the people we know and represent, that we see the best of this House. If any children who are grieving are watching, they will hopefully think that we have taken a first step in listening to what they have been telling us and are moving towards what they need to support them.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Government support for bereaved children.