End of Life Care | Bereavement care | Emotional support and signposting

Emotional support and signposting
Session overview
Description
This session will help you to understand the skills required to communicate effectively with individuals and families affected by bereavement, demonstrating empathy and signposting to other services where appropriate.

This session was reviewed by Nikki Tout and Sarah Hanrott and last updated in January 2023.

By the end of this session you will be able to:

• describe how to initiate and maintain supportive conversations with bereaved people
• recognise and respond to a variety of different barriers to communication
• describe some of the complexities in communicating with bereaved people who are not normally resident in the UK
• recognise the value of signposting in referring bereaved people on to more specialised services

Before commencing this session we suggest you complete:

• Talking about death and dying (215-0701)

Many people feel challenged and lack confidence at the prospect of communicating with and supporting people who have been recently bereaved.

Different people require us to communicate with them in different ways, so it is crucial that we are aware of the main issues affecting bereaved people, that we anticipate where the problem areas are likely to be, and also overcome barriers that might stop us from establishing trust and initiating supportive conversations.

This session seeks to dispel some of the misunderstandings surrounding communicating with the bereaved and will describe how to sensitively approach conversations to establish trust.