A new guide and key messages for professionals working with young adults in the CJS who’ve experienced bereavement, have been produced by Professor Sue Read and Dr Sotirios Santatzoglou at Keele University.

The authors recognise that offenders, and particularly young adult offenders, experience a disproportionate amount of bereavement.  The guide and key messages have been produced to address the gap in information available for a broad spectrum of people working in the CJS, including probation officers, prison officers, chaplains, and voluntary groups coming into prisons such as prisoners’ families organisations, Samaritans etc.

The contents of the guide and key messages draw upon the experiences of health care professionals, bereavement counsellors, and palliative care professionals over the course of two years.  The key messages have been designed to complement the main report.  They highlight the needs of bereaved young people and provide both information and good practice initiatives to support professionals.  The guide also offers an overview of the key models and contemporary bereavement practice issues to inform those professionals about the issues they may need to consider when supporting young people.

Find out more about the guide and key messages by contacting Patsy Corcoran, Development Manager at Asist, who designed the two publications.