Children’s Grief Education Association

The loss of a loved one is a universal human experience. How thoughts and feelings about the loss are expressed vary by culture. We encourage you to adapt information in this site to what fits for your beliefs and customs.

Information in this website is not intended to diagnose or treat mental health concerns. Seek prompt professional attention in your community for mental health care.

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Neil Thompson’s Lesson for Living – Don’t disempower yourself

There are some people who can be so insensitive, dismissive and even abusive towards others that they have the effect of disempowering them, by which I mean putting them down, taking the wind out of their sails and undermining their confidence. This is bad enough, but what I have also noticed over the years is that there are just as many people – if not more – who do that to themselves. And that is what I mean by ‘self-disempowerment’. There appears to be no shortage of people who disparage themselves and undermine themselves (for example, through what is known as ‘negative self-talk’, such as telling yourself: ‘I can’t’ before you have even tried) …

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Supporting young carers and their families

As part of The Children’s Society, the Include Programme reaches out to young carers from all communities through our national and local programmes, helping voluntary and statutory services supporting young carers. We also campaign for change and promote best practice with central and local government and work in partnership with social workers, teachers and health care professionals to deliver solutions that consider the needs of the whole family …

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Treating workers like people really does improve engagement levels

Ever since the role of personnel management evolved to human resources, employers have struggled to ensure that the people they employ are treated as humans and not resources. Although it may be logical to assume that staff don’t like to be treated as numbers on a data sheet, it’s good to know that there’s evidence that companies that focus on creating a human-focused workplace do reap significant rewards in terms of wellbeing, engagement, and retention. This is according to a report released by Globoforce that found that when employers create a culture of employee recognition at work; levels of happiness and trust dramatically improve. According to the research receiving recognition at work makes people feel more appreciated (92 percent); prouder of their work (86 percent); more satisfied with their job (85 percent); happier (86 percent); more engaged (83 percent); and more committed to the company (81 percent) …

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Seth Godin’s Blog – More powerful than you know

I think that’s always been a little true, but now it’s a lot true.

Everyone reading this has an enormous amount of power.

Cultural power, mostly. The ability to speak up, to paint a picture of a different way, to share words and images with those that care to hear them.

But also the power of connection. The power to find people who need to know each other and help make magic happen …

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New guide to help combat sex discrimination

Workplace experts, Acas, have launched a new guide to help employers and managers identify, tackle and prevent sex discrimination in the workplace. Over the past year, the Acas helpline has dealt with over 7,000 calls related to sex discrimination in the workplace. The new guidance will help employers and managers get to grips with the laws around equality and to be aware of any behaviour that could be considered as sex discrimination. Acas Chair Sir Brendan Barber said: “Sex discrimination is unlawful and it’s worrying that so many people have called the Acas helpline about it. Nine out of ten calls came from employees and the overwhelming majority of these callers were women. We have published a new free guide to help employers, small businesses and managers understand the basics around equality law, the different types of sex discrimination and awareness of how positive action can apply to certain jobs. It is important to be fully aware of the rules around equality within the workplace as falling on the wrong side of the law could result in a costly employment tribunal.”

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Neil Thompson’s Lesson for Living – Read and write

There has been some scaremongering going on that involves suggesting that reading and writing are dying out, in their present form at least. I’m not so sure that I would go that far, but things are certainly changing. Let’s start with reading. The traditional idea was that much learning was done by reading and subsequently applying the knowledge gained to situations you encounter. The more reading you did, the better equipped you were to deal, in an intelligent, informed way, with the challenges life threw up for you, whether at work or in your private life. However, a very clear pattern that I have noticed is that many people now are not reading to anywhere near the extent they used to. A common way of learning now goes something like this: I want to learn how to do x, so I put into Google: ‘How to do x’. What then comes up will be either a short set of written instructions or, increasingly a ‘how to’ video. While this can be a really useful and effective way of learning very practical things, it has a lot of limitations …

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The myth of positive discrimination

There are thousands of minority groups living in the UK who are disadvantaged in some way. Instead of spoon-feeding them towards success, a better policy exists to ensure their vulnerabilities are protected These days, almost everyone is familiar with the terms ‘affirmative action’ and ‘positive discrimination’. However, few of us are actually aware of what these policies are and how they’re enforced.

Affirmative Action was first introduced in America in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. The idea was to introduce quotas into the workplace to improve minority representation and increase economic opportunities for those who may not have been able to gain a similar job otherwise. Affirmative Action was also designed to end discrimination in the workplace because of creed, colour, or national origin. Since its introduction, it has been highly controversial, and states including California, Washington, Michigan, and Arizona have abolished the policy.

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