This section offers suggestions about coping in the last few days of your child’s life and how you might try and meet the needs of all your family. It also looks at feelings families have experienced about what happens at the end of life, and what has helped them and their child.
This section covers some of the practical details and tasks that need to be done after your child has died. This includes registering the death and choosing an funeral director. We also offer advice about contacting others, in particular, your child’s school.
This section offers suggestions and ideas about different funeral services. We look at what other families have done or found helpful or comforting.
In this section you will find information about how children and adults grieve. Knowing what to expect, and what others have experienced, may help you to see a way forward when grieving for your child. Children may seem to understand about death one minute, and then seem to change their mind the next.
In this section we look at how families may feel in the first few weeks and months after a child has died. We look at worries and fears that are shared by many families and how to recognise when your other children may need extra help with coping.
In this section we consider what happens when you face birthdays, other festivals and anniversaries of the diagnosis and when your child died. We suggest what has been found to be helpful by other families, what they have done to mark special occasions and how to think about all the different members of the family.
In this section we look at life a few years after your child has died.
This section offers some helpful suggestions of sources of support for when your child dies, including how friends can help and organisations that may be able to offer support to you and your family.
Parents have told us they would like information to give to friends. This may help them understand what they can do to help after your child has died.
Parents have told us that it would be helpful to have some information to give to their child’s school. This is to help them understand what they can do to help both before and after your child has died. They have also suggested it may help to have some guidance for schools about how to talk to the rest of your child’s class, and what to do if your child still has brothers or sisters attending school.
