Bereavement care for families part 2: Evaluation of a paediatric follow-up programme

Abstract

In North America, parents are not expected to outlive their child. When they do, neighbours, co-workers, friends and family do not know what to say or do resulting in parents feeling isolated in their grief and left alone to find the support they need. The Paediatric Palliative Care team at Capital Health's, Stollery Children's Hospital (Stollery) in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada began a programme of bereavement follow-ups in April 2002 to offer support to families who had experienced the death of their child. In Part 1 of this article (deJong-Berg and deVlamming, 2005) implementation and the current state of the programme is outlined, and in Part 2 we present the results of the programme evaluation conducted in spring, 2005. Eighty-one families were invited to take part in a satisfaction survey to determine the helpfulness of this bereavement follow-up programme. Twenty-nine parents, representing 21 families, took part. Parents reported that written information received was useful and that they felt supported knowing a resource was available. They also felt also felt that the programme extended the care given by the Stollery staff throughout their child's illness and death. This article reports the findings of the programme evaluation and discusses the implications for practice and future research.