The Seasons for Growth programme supports children to deal with their experiences of grief and loss. The programme often encounters deep and sometimes damaging responses to these experiences and the feelinsg they generate.
During 2025 a child on one of our programmes began to open up and share their feelings and thoughts about suicide and death. This became a recurring theme at sessions and was a direct response to the deep grief being experienced following the loss of a grandparent. The individual felt sad and was often withdrawn, although they would put on a charade to please others. After consultation with the Principal of the school, the child’s parents & their teacher, it was agreed with the child that a wraparound system would be put in place as a collaborative response to our duty of care. This ensured we were collectively able to check in with the student every day, affirm who they could talk to & know that they were in a safe place.
Over the course of the programme the participating child stopped talking about death and began to change their comments. They began to verbally confirm that they were calm and felt safe and supported. A powerful moment was when they were able to link the loss of their grandparent to a book we had read in one of the sessions “Beginnings & Endings with Lifetimes in Between” by Bryan Mellonie & Robert Ingpen.
The student was able to understand that everyone & everything has a life span, that is the way of the world and by doing the Seasons for Growth programme it helped them to come to terms with their loss in a more positive way and develop coping systems that would support them beyond the life of the programme.