When Helen was 5, her baby brother Martin died in a cot death. She remembers his little white coffin being put into the neighbours car, her other brother, who was four at the time, remembers that car registration number to this day, over fifty years later.

Decades later, Helen went on to found the Children’s Grief Centre in Limerick, supporting children who are grieving. In this conversation, Helen and Liz discuss children’ grief and draw on their experience as counsellors to discuss some of the important themes that can come up for children who are grieving and offer some really practical suggestions on how to best support grieving children, whether their loss be bereavement or parental separation.

For more information on children’s grief, see https://www.childhoodbereavement.ie, the website of the Irish Childhood Bereavement Network.

The Children’s Grief Centre in Limerick can be contacted here https://www.childrensgriefcentre.ie. See their video here https://youtu.be/jgKcdZeW5rs

And for people in the USA, The Dougy Centre for grieving children can be contacted here https://www.dougy.org and in the UK, https://www.childbereavementuk.org

The article by Daniel McConnell that Helen refers to can be read here https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/analysis/every-child-has-right-to-be-heard-829640.html