THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DOING GRIEF WORK WITH CHILDREN: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a group intervention with 12 bereaved children, aged 8-12. All of the children had been bereaved of a parent within the past 2 years. Due to the small number of children available for inclusion in the study, 6 of the children had previously received individual professional help for grief related issues. The design was a repeated measures pre and post intervention between group design. The study compared the two sub-groups of bereaved children with a group of non-bereaved children who were matched in terms of age and sex. The results indicate that the behaviour of bereaved children was different to that of non-bereaved children. The behaviour of the bereaved children significantly changed following the intervention, becoming more ‘normalised’.