Critical Incident and Bereavement Support for Education Settings

Critical incident and bereavement support refers to what education settings can access after an incident or incidents which are sudden, unexpected, significantly disruptive, traumatic, or associated with bereavement and loss. In these situations, education settings may often feel overwhelmed, or unsure how to support their education communities. The psychology and therapeutic services understand that education settings may want to seek advice, reassurance, or additional direct therapeutic support when such incidents occur.

• The Education and Learning team are the first point of contact for any critical incident and bereavement. They will discuss the incident/s with you, and will direct to P&TS if support from the team is considered helpful.
• The P&TS has collated information and advice to support critical incident, bereavement, and trauma responsive practice in the following Sadly, it is highly likely that a bereavement within an education community will occur, accessing the guidance below will help you prepare and plan for this.
• The P&TS team offer indirect and direct support, depending on the specific circumstances. We can offer additional advice, signposting, consultation around incident/s and where it is deemed appropriate direct support to education settings. Direct support will often be creating a safe space for discussion and reflection, either for students or for staff, or both.

The P&TS recognise that whilst critical incidents and bereavements within education settings are often identified, and acted upon, we know that many children and young people will have their own adverse experiences that we may not have a full awareness of. For this reason, trauma responsive practice forms the second part of the guidance below , which offers information and advice which can be used pro-actively to support all of our learners’ wellbeing.