Impact of school belonging and peer support on grief symptoms in school-aged children

Supervisors: Dennis Golm, Antonia Barke (External) & Bettina Doering (External) 

Abstract

Overall: Seven percent of children experience a death of a parent and more experience death of a close family member or friend (Linder et al., 2022). The experience of loss and bereavement is stressful and can be traumatic for children. For this reason, bereavement can be considered an adverse childhood experience (ACE).

ACEs have a negative impact on both immediate and long-term mental health (e.g., Mosley-Johnson et al., 2021) and educational outcomes (Steward-Tufescu et al., 2022). Encouragingly, protective factors that can reduce the impact of ACEs have been identified. One such protective factor is school belonging (Davies et al., 2019). Considering school belonging acts as a protective factor for other ACEs, it is plausible that it may help mitigate severe grief symptoms in children.

According to Bronfenbrenner's theory of bioecological systems (1994), school, particularly if school belonging is high, can act as a second family (Holland, 2008; Holland & Wilkinson, 2015). This means that school is well placed to offer crucial support and interventions for grieving children and young people (Ferow et al., 2019). 

The empirical paper of this thesis aims to investigate the impact of school belonging, peer and familial support on severity of grief symptoms. Participants aged between 4 and 18 years old who have recently experienced a bereavement of someone were asked to fill in an online questionnaire that measured their current grief symptoms, school belonging, peer and familial support. The participants' data will then be quantitatively analysed.

It is thought that increased school belonging will reduce severity of grief symptoms. Similarly, previous research has shown level of familial (Biank & Werner-Lin, 2011) and peer (Dopp & Cain, 2012) support impacts how CYP cope with grief. The systematic literature review investigates school-based interventions for bereaved chilldren, 11 papers were included in the review.