Exploring Staff Bereavement Experiences Following an SEN Child Death: An IPA Study

Staff in Special Educational Needs (SEN) settings are more likely to experience the death of a pupil than those in mainstream settings (Summer & Witts, 2003) and mortality rates are higher in those with more profound or severe disabilities (Emerson et al., 2014). This relationship between SEN school staff and a student following their death creates unique challenges. The aim of this study was to explore staff members' lived bereavement experience in SEN schools following the death of a child with a severe or profound and multiple learning difficulty. The research focused on 3 cases of accidental, unexpected and expected death within SEN primary and secondary schools. Individual semistructured interviews were conducted with 13 members of teaching and support staff and were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA; Smith, 2017). Findings demonstrate how staff talked about the future they imagined for the deceased children and this often resulted in varying degrees of sense making following their death. For some there was a clear imagined future, whereas for others their degenerative conditions led to dark or unimagined futures. What was clear, however, was that staff continued bonds with the deceased children in a variety of ways following their death, from spiritual sensing to keeping objects, photos and memorabilia. Findings also demonstrate the complexities of the staff-student relationship and how staff experienced a degree of closeness to students, which in many ways was dissimilar to other forms of professional relationships. When attempting to understanding issues such as disenfranchisement this is important. Staff experienced little disenfranchisement within the school setting due to the shared experience and empathic abilities of colleagues. There was evidence, however, of enfranchising actions, particularly of senior leaders who were well positioned to undertake actions, such as allowing time and space and facilitating funeral attendance. Ultimately staff experienced varying degrees of personalprofessional duality whereby they had to balance their own emotions with their professional responsibilities. Experiential, qualitative findings are discussed in relation to existing literature and theory from the field of death and bereavement-based research from a range of different contexts such as medicine and nursing, healthcare and therapy. Future research is reflected on as well as considering the application of the findings in relation to international policy research and how they might inform future bereavement policy and practice in the UK.