Silver award for children’s support pack

A Highland partnership project that initially aimed to support children and young people attending school with life-limiting conditions is now being adopted across Scotland as guidance for parents, teachers and health professionals dealing with children facing unforeseen traumatic events and bereavement.

The Cosla Silver Award winning partners met recently at the CROCUS Bereavement Group in Inverness to celebrate their achievement with Cllr Alasdair Christie, Depute Leader of The Highland Council.

The partners who include; Highland Council, NHS Highland, Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS), and Crocus created the “Life-limiting conditions, Palliative Care, Loss, Bereavement, and Trauma Support Pack”, This powerful new toolkit combines web resources, health services, support groups and beyond.

Cllr Christie said: “This is truly an extremely deserving award that Highland Council, NHS Highland and partners have received from Cosla. It is deserving not just because they have recognised and filled a support gap but because of the real and actual differences that they are making to young people, their families and professionals who have to face and deal with extremely traumatic events across the country. 

“Their research has shown that appropriate, targeted support and intervention at the most needed time in a young person’s life can make a huge difference to their future wellbeing in the longer term. To win the Silver Cosla Award the team needed to show how they were making a real difference locally. Not only did they demonstrate how they did this in Highland, they also provided evidence of demand for their support pack across Scotland. I congratulate the whole team on their outstanding achievement.”

Jane Baines, Highland Council’s, Additional Support Needs Development Officer said “We’ve had feedback from families who have had to deal with the sudden death of a relative through a car accident or an injury who’ve said they found it really helpful to have resources on hand explaining to children what’s happened. Children have also said they’ve felt staff using the pack were more relaxed talking to them.”

The pack is now being adopted by a range of agencies and looks set to become a vital resource across the country. Most importantly of all however it’s already helping families and children understand what they are experiencing and make positive memories of loved ones in their communities.

The “Life-limiting conditions, Palliative Care, Loss, Bereavement, and Trauma Support Pack” is available on the Council’s website at: 

www.highland.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/18031/trauma_loss.pdf

At the Cosla Awards