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The sudden and unexpected death of an infant or young child is very distressing for families and can impact on the health professionals involved.
Some health professionals tell us they are unsure how to manage these distressing events well.
This video gives you guidance on how to best support yourself and others when an infant or young child dies suddenly and unexpectedly.
This video will cover supporting yourself and your team, supporting bereaved parents or caregivers.
To respond well to the sudden and unexpected death of an infant or young child, you need to prepare, acknowledge, respond, recover.
Stop, take a deep breath and prepare yourself. Check in with yourself, how are you feeling and coping? What do you need?
Acknowledge to yourself that you are entering a difficult and challenging situation, but you have resources and strategies to help you cope. Support yourself first so you can do your best work to support others, then think of your team.
Take stock of who is involved, think about their level of experience, coping styles, needs. Assess the resources available to support your team and use these. For example, social workers, pastoral care workers and chaplains. Then think about what you need to do next.
Remember nobody comes to work expecting to witness the sudden unexpected death of an infant or young child. Strong emotional responses such as shock, sadness, anxiety, anger and hopelessness are normal. You may also feel an overwhelming desire to help the family and do whatever you can to support them whilst in your care, however everyone will respond differently. You may not feel a significant emotional impact, that's okay too. You may experience other signs of grief or distress, like changes in appetite or sleep, difficulty coping with everyday life or not feeling quite like yourself.
There is no right or wrong way to react, and your reaction does not reflect on your competence or how much you care. Even if you've experienced similar situations before, you or others may react in unexpected ways. A death might intersect with personal circumstances, contributing to complex emotions. For example, if you are a parent of an infant, or if you or your partner are pregnant. Sometimes there is no apparent reason why you or others respond in a particular way.
You should also be aware that sometimes reactions are delayed, and delayed reactions may be different to more immediate reactions.
Whether you have strong emotions or not, it's okay to need and ask for support. Your humanity strengthens your practice and is integral to what drew you to a caring profession.
Now is the time to do the practical tasks of your job as needed, but don't be afraid to show your humanity along the way. It is okay to show some emotion as long as the needs of the grieving family remain central to your interactions with them. Remember you don't need to be unemotional to be professional. Families tell us it is distressing if professionals seem too hardened to their child's death. If you are supporting a team, use practical measures like debriefs, compassionate rostering, peer support and encouraging support seeking.
Reactions to being part of an event involving the sudden and unexpected death of an infant or child may be prolonged, change over time or be delayed. The need to care for yourself and support each other can be long-term. You should continue to prioritise your health and well-being, draw on your coping strategies and support resources, support your team's well-being through practical measures.
It is okay to need time and ongoing support to feel all right again. As time passes if you feel things are getting worse not better, please seek professional support. Remember your employee assistance program is available 24/7 supporting bereaved parents and caregivers.
Professionals tell us they recognise the extreme distress of bereaved parents and caregivers but aren't always confident in supporting them.
This guidance is based on what bereaved parents and caregivers have told us is helpful. It is important to choose your words and actions carefully, they will be remembered and coupled with strong emotions. The events surrounding the child's death will stay with parents and caregivers forever.
Your words and actions will take on acute significance now, and in the future. This can feel like an overwhelming responsibility, but it is also an opportunity to make a lasting positive difference to people in great need.
To support parents or caregivers whose child has died in a SUDI event, you need to:
To help parents and caregivers feel emotionally safe, you can provide them with a comfortable and private space.
Adopt a composed and calm demeanour to reduce their sense of feeling rushed or pressured.
Sit comfortably in silence, remember there is no need to fill the space by talking.
Give them time and space to speak freely about their experiences and emotions.
Meet them where they are emotionally. This includes normalising, validating and sitting with their emotions, rather than jumping to fix them.
Take a flexible approach, understanding that different people may have varying reactions even in the same family, and people may change their mind on some things.
Affirm and respect religious and cultural practices where possible.
To help parents or caregivers understand what's happening you can be guided by their wishes about what they want to know and when.
Provide information and answer questions slowly, calmly, clearly, honestly and sensitively. Give information slowly in manageable pieces and repeat it. Remember grief interferes with understanding and retaining information. As events unfold describe and reiterate what will happen next and why.
Be sensitive, but open and honest about coronial processes and the possible need for a forensic examination. Explain how it might help by providing some answers about why the child died. Remember some activities such as memento creation or touching the child will need to wait until after the coroner has released the child's body. Reassure them that forensic medicine staff can facilitate these wishes. Help them communicate their wishes to forensic medicine staff.
Provide written information such as standardised brochures and detailed notes of discussions.
To help parents and caregivers feel connected to the child you can treat and acknowledge parents as parents and caregivers as important in the child's life. Treat the child with the same respect and dignity that you would a live child and use their name. Support them to spend as much time with their child as forensic processes will allow. Be sensitive to the complexity of their grief.
Often parents and caregivers feel shame or guilt, believing they are at fault for somehow not protecting their child. Affirm their love for their child.
To help mobilise lasting support around parents and caregivers, you can:
Finally, the best thing to do is be guided by humanity, compassion respect, and kindness in how you look after others and yourself. Most of all, your careful and considered support will be a gift to the child's family and caregivers at their time of great need.
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