Caregiving and bereavement
Led by Senior Research Fellow Dr Emily Harrop, the theme of caregiving and bereavement focuses on examining the experiences and support needs of individuals and families facing advanced illness and loss, with a particular interest in developing evidence and interventions to improve support.
Our research identified rapid, real-time implications for improving end-of-life care and the support available during and following the pandemic. It demonstrated the extraordinary challenges of bereavement during this time, including the disruption to end-of-life care, dying and mourning practices, social-support networks, coping mechanisms and grief processes.
Understanding support needs and improving access to support
We have identified multiple challenges faced by people when accessing informal and formal support, as well as difficulties faced by services providing timely, appropriate, and equitable care.
Dr Harrop’s research and expertise have been integral to the recommendations of the UK Commission on Bereavement and the development of the National Framework for Bereavement Care in Wales.
Our Grief Support Guide helps people to find appropriate support, and alongside colleagues at Edinburgh University, we developed an online bereavement support intervention called My Grief My Way.
Building evidence on the impacts and effectiveness of support interventions
We aim to optimise the usefulness and relevance of research evidence for informing service design and delivery. This we do through the pursuit of realist-informed approaches to evidence production, focusing on answering the question- what works, for whom, in what contexts and why?
Our recent analysis of longitudinal survey data collected in the BeCovid study advances understandings of impact mechanisms in informal and formal sources of bereavement support-and also provides the evidence underpinning our Grief Support Guide.
Our UK-wide study investigating bereavement experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic was recognised for its outstanding impact on public policy in the 2023 ESRC Impact Competition.
Assessing need, impact, and outcomes
Our bereavement core outcome set has informed the evaluation practices of bereavement services, intervention design and our own Bereavement Support Needs scale.
In collaboration with Winston’s Wish and scale author Dr Linda Machin, we are currently developing and validating two new tools for assessing and exploring children’s grief - the Children’s Attitude to Grief Scale and a pictorial version of the scale for use with young children and young people with additional learning needs.
In collaboration with the National Bereavement Alliance, we are also developing an accessible code book which can support the evaluation practices of bereavement services while supporting continuous and equitable service improvement.
