Bereavement support
If a baby, child, or young adult dies, our Butterfly Team will look after the family and offer early bereavement support.
The Butterfly Coordinator may help transfer the child to one of our Butterfly Suites – a private, comfortable room which enables families to stay together as an alternative to a funeral home.
Should a family wish to stay at home, we are able to work with local funeral directors to enable this wherever possible.
Practical support from our Butterfly Team includes
- Registering the child’s death
- Planning the funeral
- Collecting mementoes such as handprints
- Providing emotional support to siblings
What happens next?
Following the funeral, your baby, child and young adult will be allocated a bereavement key worker from the Butterfly Team who will stay in touch through cards, phone calls and home visits when needed.
If counselling is appropriate, they may refer you to the Wellbeing and Therapies Team, where services such as counselling can be accessed.
Should counselling be appropriate for your needs, you will be provided with a safe, confidential space where you can talk about your feelings and emotions during one-hour counselling sessions. These could be at Claire House Wirral, our Liverpool site or, in some circumstances for siblings, at school.
Our Counsellors are all BACP registered, meaning they meet the high standards set by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and use:
- Talking therapies to discuss thoughts, feelings and behaviours which can be held in a variety of locations involving walk and talk (counselling outdoors)
- Techniques like hypnotherapy, mindfulness, visualisation and grounding to help manage responses trauma.
- Rewind sessions – helping people to manage trauma related responses, such as flashbacks, unhelpful thoughts or panic attacks
- Cognitive techniques such as reframing, to help someone think about a situation differently and consider a different perspective
- Creative methods – such as incorporating music, art and sand play into therapeutic sessions to support the exploration of difficult thoughts and feelings
- Group counselling
Referrals to our Counselling Team come through our Butterfly Team, Care Team or external professionals such as GPs and social workers.
For self-referrals, email: clairehousech.familysupport@nhs.net