PD for Caring Professionals Supporting Children

Rethinking care and support through a mattering-reinforcing lens, so the children in your care, can feel cared for.

You work in the education, counselling, health or grief support sector supporting children and teens. You are passionate about, and good at, the work you do. Increasingly, you find yourself wanting to do more to support the bereaved children and teens you work with, yet you’re unsure what that ‘more’ looks like. You’re doing their absolute best, yet at the end of the day, your best, rarely feels like enough. You care deeply for those in your care, sometimes wondering if you care a little too much.

If you can relate to this, know that you’re not alone. And, that there is an alternative way.

I support huge-hearted caring professionals by offering an alternative lens to support children and teens in their grief.

Does this sound like you? (Or others in your team?)

My approach to grief support, mattering-reinforcing care, is based on my research with children. I interviewed children aged 6 to 13 years about their experiences of care and support following the suicide of someone close to them. A key finding of my research was that children only experience care and support in the context of mattering. In other words, behaviours intended to be caring and supportive, are only experienced as caring and supportive, if those behaviours reinforce a sense of mattering.Children need to feel seen, heard and valued, in order to feel supported.

A mattering-reinforcing care approach supports children in a way that:

• recognises each child as the expert in their grief and support needs

• is based on a genuine connection

• is activity-based, child-centric and at their pace

• ensures the child feels safe, seen and heard

• is responsive to each child’s unique and fluctuating support needs, so care is based on actual, rather than assumed, needs

• allows the child to experience care as a partnership; as something done with them, rather than to them.

This new knowledge, new approach, has significant implications for practice for anyone working in the care, support and social service sector. My research findings have gone on to inform the development of programmes and approaches, globally, in a range of contexts.

When we flick that switch – adopt a mattering-reinforcing approach to care - two things happen:

1)    Work becomes less stressful and more satisfying, with professionals knowing that they’re making the difference they’re so desperately wanting to make. Adopting a mattering-reinforcing approach takes the guess work out of providing care.

2)    Those being cared for and supported – students, clients, patients – receive care that is based on their actual, rather than assumed, needs. They feel seen, heard, and cared for at a whole new level.

Mattering-reinforcing care is transforming care and support.