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Navigating going back to work after child loss

Episode 12: Back to Work

 

 

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This episode is dedicated to Rachael ♥.

Episode Guest - Jillian Bain

For over 20 years I worked in managerial roles in Human Resources in both the private and public sector. Following the sudden and unexpected death of my daughter Rachael in 2019, I reflected on how my life had changed and what I needed to focus on now, including my career.  Returning to university in 2021 I completed an MSc Career Guidance & Development, focusing on the impact of child loss on careers for my research project.  I currently work as a Careers Adviser in a university and am particularly interested in how we can break down barriers to employment including socioeconomic status, mental and physical disability and ethnicity. 

My daughter Rachael:

 

Jillian Bain

Summary:

Is work a saviour or a source of anxiety after loss? What can employers do better to support bereaved parents? What happens when you find your job just doesn’t seem to matter any more? How do you work out what to do next?

Jillian Bain, a bereaved mum herself and Career Development Professional from Scotland, talks us through some of the complexities of grief and a return to work, and how we might navigate this aspect of life after loss. 

Resources:

If you’d like to read Jillian’s research, please email her for a copy on jillmill1972@gmail.com

ACAS information about Bereavement and Time Off Work

ACAS information about Disability at Work

The research Jillan mentioned by Wonch et all is this: Wonch Hill, P., Cacciatore, J., Shreffler, K. M., & Pritchard, K. M. (2016). The loss of self: The effect of miscarriage, stillbirth, and child death on maternal self-esteem. Death Studies41(4), 226–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2016.1261204

Careers Guidance

Want to volunteer but don’t know where to start? Check these out:  Volunteering Wales website, Volunteer Scotland website, and National Council for Voluntary Organisations for England and the UK. 

Returning to work after the death of your baby or child by Child Bereavement UK is a short video and article for bereaved parents

Back to Work leaflet by The Compassionate Friends

Employers Bereavement Guide published by the National Bereavement Service







 






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2 Comments

  1. Colleen 26 October 2024at15:36

    Thank you. My boy Jake died suddenly 5 months ago, I am still off work currently and deciding if I am ready or not to try and go back. This covered really well some things I am anxious about and given me some things to thing about

    Reply
    1. Tracy 28 October 2024at06:50

      Sending love and support to you Colleen xx. So sorry your son Jake has died and you find yourself here. I hope your employer is understanding and allows you to transition to work at a pace that is supportive to you. Take care. Our very first episode is for newly bereaved parents which might be helpful to you. Love Tracy xx

      Reply

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Series 2 – Episode 12 Transcript:

Debbie Enever, Host

Jillian Bain, Guest

[00:00:00] Hello. This is the Bereaved Parents Club podcast. It’s the club none of us want to be members of, but here we are. My name is Debbie and I’m a bereaved parent. This podcast is for all of us to share and celebrate the stories of our children and offer support to each other. Each episode will explore topics that have relevance to us as we navigate the world as bereaved parents.

Whether your loss was last week, last month, last year, or even last century, you are welcome here. And whether your child was a baby, a youngster, a teenager, an adult, or even a parent themselves, you are welcome here. Please be aware that each episode will deal with themes of death and [00:01:00] loss. 

The idea of returning to work after the loss of your child can seem for some parents like trying to time travel back to ‘before’ when the world was normal.

For others, it brings a welcome sense of familiarity, something to fill the void and a way of doing something useful and positive. For others still, it brings a realisation that even if they want to work, they know that their capacity to do so, or to do so effectively, has been reduced. Today, we’re going to look at some of the challenges of work after child loss.

Our guest is Jillian Bain. Jillian is a career guidance professional from Scotland. And in 2019, she experienced the sudden and unexpected loss of her daughter, Rachael. In 2023, Jillian completed an MSc in Career Guidance and Development, submitting a dissertation entitled “An exploration of the impact of child loss on career decision making and [00:02:00] trajectory”. So it’s fair to say we have the right person to be chatting to about work. Jillian, welcome. 

Thank you. 

Before we dive into the complex world of post loss work, can I invite you to tell us more about yourself, about Rachael, and your loss? 

Yes, of course. So as you said, I’m Jillian. I live in, I live in central Scotland and I am a mum of two beautiful children, Rachael and Fraser.

And prior to going into career guidance, I had a long career in human resources as well. And, you know, more recently trained in career guidance after Rachael’s death, actually. And I think it’s fair to say that, you know, Rachael’s death came as a huge shock to us. She died very suddenly and unexpectedly um, from a misdiagnosed blood clot on the 26th of December 2019.

She had been ill for about a week before she died and I’d taken her to our GP service. She’d been to A& E and I’d taken her to her own GP. She was breathless. She was complaining of chest pains. She said she felt dizzy and she [00:03:00] just generally didn’t look quite right. The out of hours GP did do a number of tests and examinations and he wasn’t happy with Rachael’s breathing and her rapid heart rate.

So he walked us through to the A& E department and he asked them to do some tests to rule things out. He didn’t disclose what and with hindsight I really wish he had now because I would have asked different questions. But in his notes he said he couldn’t rule out a blood clot and sadly A& E and our own GP thought that Rachael was having panic attacks and sent us home with guidance for that.

And they ignored the original sort of out of hours GP assessment that it could be a blood clot. They ignored that Rachael had started the pill three weeks earlier to help her manage heavy periods. Um, and that in itself should have been a red flag. You know, and Rachael woke me up in the early hours of kind of Boxing Day morning gasping for, gasping for air. Um, I did call for an ambulance, but she collapsed in my arms before, before they arrived. And I did have to do CPR, um, before she was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead. 

It would be fair to say that, at that moment in time, my world was ripped apart. [00:04:00] She has a younger brother, Fraser, who was just 11 when she died. You know, being a kind of solid little unit of three. Now I had to support a brother in grief while kind of struggling myself. And I’m an only child. I’m also a single parent, so there was no kind of extensive family to rely upon to try and kind of help us get through those days. And so I looked externally really quite quickly to try and find organisations or charities or just somebody or something to help me try and make sense of what had happened in our world.

It was also quite a difficult time, both in terms of the time of year, obviously it was Christmas, but also my own work circumstances. So, you know, I had taken redundancy, um, and was leaving one job at the end of December, and had started, and had got lined up a new job starting at the beginning of January.

And Rachael died right in the middle of that transition. Now, I started the new job. Now, some people might think that’s It’s utterly crazy, and you know, and I get that. I delayed my start date till the beginning of February. And I know that, as I say for others, [00:05:00] that just would be unimaginable and you know, that’s absolutely okay. But for me, though, I was sitting in my house, it was January, it was dark, it was bleak. Fraser wanted to try and go to school. I didn’t have a job, other job, because I’d taken redundancy. And so I was in that kind of really strange situation where I wanted to go and try because I thought I needed to be feeling like I was doing something, and not having the kind of the safety net of having that old job to return back to.

And you know, on reflection, I’m really glad that I did take that new job, because one, nobody there knew me pre Rachael’s death. Now obviously, I mean, they were fantastic with me. They weren’t going to sit there and make any kind of comparisons of who I was before and who I was now. Um, and I think for me that was quite important.

But we also went into that first national lockdown just a few weeks later. And as everybody will know, and anybody who experienced loss during that time, it was, it was horrendous. You couldn’t rely on family and friends. Nobody could come and sit with you. [00:06:00] Nobody could kind of give you a hug or be that sort of comfort.

Having to get up and go to work, I’d say go to work, albeit in my house, gave me a reason to get up in the morning. And I have to be honest and say that if I didn’t have that, I’m not sure where I would be now. So that crazy decision to start that job or to give it a goal was actually turned out to be the right decision, looking back at what came next.

But what can I tell you about Rachael? Well, um, she was a typical 14 year old teenager. Um, she could be stroppy, she could be argumentative. Demanding, she could play her music too loud, she would leave her makeup all over the sink, dishes all over the floor, clothes that would be worn for five minutes and then put in the washing, you know, you know, what I wouldn’t give now for that kind of noise and chaos back in our lives.

Rachael was also really very artistic and she loved to paint and draw. She particularly liked experimenting with face paints and makeup. And I remember her video calling me one day when I was coming home from work and I was sitting on the bus and I answered the phone and she painted herself as a lion.

You know, [00:07:00] now, I kind of got a fright and went, ‘Ahhh!’ Goodness knows what everybody else on the bus around me must have thought was going on. I mean, she looked amazing, but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting to see when she called me. Rachael also loved music from an early age, and it is a love and a passion that we share.

And she enjoyed dance classes for many years. She was doing a dance course at school. She also started to play, playing the piano. And it was fair to say it was a bit of a struggle to get her to practice, and she didn’t really enjoy it. She did her grade one, and she was the only people, and still once is the only people, that her teacher ever had that got a perfect score in the oral test. And so when she asked me, could she quit piano but take up singing lessons, I thought, well, you know, you’ve obviously got an ear for music, so, you know, let’s, let’s kind of give it a go. And she loved her singing lessons. Um, and she’d started doing kind of songwriting with her singing teacher as well, just before she died.

She loved live music. So we’ve seen a lot of bands and artists over the years. Um, she loved James Arthur and Lewis Capaldi. She loved Little Mix and The Vamps and in 2018 we managed to do a concert a [00:08:00] month, which was quite some feat and quite hefty on my bank balance, but however, you know, looking back I’m so pleased we took those opportunities to try and do those things together.

Rachael was also really fiercely loyal and protective and generous with both her time and our attention and she had a really, really strong sense of kind of right and wrong. She would stand up for anyone being bullied, anyone being picked on for being different. Occasionally that landed her in hot water at school because she perhaps didn’t go about standing up in the right way.

But you know, it’s really hard to be cross with somebody when you actually, I think, you know, you’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. People should be treating each other with compassion and, and, you know, so she, she, she really felt that very, very strongly. She trained as a mental health ambassador for her school and her ambition was to go and either to, to do something with law potentially and advocate for young people.

But I do truly believe if that’s where she set her heart, that’s what she would have done, or she would have done something with mental health and creativity because music, dance, art, et cetera, were all things she was, you [00:09:00] know, kind of really passionate about. passionate about. So yeah, so that’s, so that’s Rachael.

It’s been sort of four and a half years since she died. We still miss her every single day. You know, I’ve gone on to do other things, but that, I’m very much a work in progress and it doesn’t take much to kind of send you spiralling back into those, those kind of early days. But for people listening who are maybe in those early stages, what I can say is it, it’s changed. Yeah. The grief is, it has changed, it has sort of softened around the edges, I guess, and when those low points come, I know that I’m going to come back out of it again. I know, I just have to trust the process and know that a better day is around the corner. So I’m, you know, I’m very much a work in progress.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that story. Um, I mean, Rachael sounds brilliant and I can completely understand why the house would feel so empty without her. Yeah when someone is that lively and creative, they kind of take up so much space in every room they’re in that it can feel very empty when they’re not there, [00:10:00] so I appreciate that.

And thank you so much for telling us about what happened as well, and where you are now. I think that’s really helpful for people to hear too. Shall we talk a little bit about what led you to do the research, where that impetus came from after you’ve got this new job and you decide to, to kind of go and do the Masters? Can you tell us a little bit about that and what drove that? 

Yeah, of course. Um, so as I said earlier, I was in quite a unique situation in that kind of, I was moving from one job to another when Rachael died and both were sort of senior HR roles. But in very different industries. And as you say, going back to work can be an escape for some people from the grief. It can be, as you say, that kind of feeling of familiarity. For others, though, it’s absolutely the last thing that they can think about. 

And some people may never go back to work because it’s too connected with what they’re, you know, involved in the job, particularly if they maybe worked in their child’s school, or if they, you know, both worked for the same organization or if it was a family business, you know, there’s lots, there’s so many kind of complexities and so [00:11:00] many kind of variations and then of course, there’s this other group who perhaps didn’t work or had stopped working, perhaps to care for a sick child. And so their job then became that person’s carer, and when that child has died, then again, it’s also what they did day to day, so there’s another kind of void, so it’s not, you know, there’s so many kind of different sort of versions of work, I guess, um, and, you know, I tried to look at as much of these kind of things in my research as I possibly could, and the harsh reality is I scratched the surface, and there’s so much more to, there’s so much more to look at. 

But I think, the one thing I want to stress, I mean I’ll obviously share my research and my findings, is that there is no right or wrong answer here. Financially some people have to go back to work because there’s nobody else to pay the bills or there is no alternative. And you know, in my research I found that kind of, Over 70 percent of participants said that work and career just no longer was important to them. They turned up, they did what they had to do, and then they went [00:12:00] home again. So things that potentially had been a passion beforehand just didn’t register any longer. 

But yeah, so in terms of why, why did I do this research? I’ve had a variety of HR roles and worked for kind of over 20 years in those roles. Everything from kind of being a consultant, giving advice, to doing stuff more with appointment policy and practice, managing our payrolls, systems migration, you name it, I’ve had a go at lots of things. And also like managed as well, a team of 14 in one organization, and it was a slightly bigger team when I changed jobs. And so I’ve got that experience of being a manager as well as having kind of worked in HR. But kind of key elements of the role were that kind of relationship building and kind of coaching others, which is kind of what took me down that sort of career guidance path.

You know, and with any senior role comes really big responsibilities. And although I continued in that type of job after Rachael died, I have to say, after that first anniversary, I really, really struggled. You know, I just kind of found it increasingly difficult to be [00:13:00] enthusiastic, to get up, to kind of log in. We were still in COVID times then, I was still working from home. So, you know, I’m going to say there was probably more than one factor. 

But definitely that, after that first year of thinking, ‘we’ve survived the first year’ and that dawning realisation that you’ve then got to survive the next year and the year after and the year after. And I took a real dip, I took a real plunge and thought, I, I can’t cope with this anymore. And I was sitting in a meeting where people were arguing whether something on the website should be in blue font or green font. And I’m in my head, I’m sitting there screaming in my head, ‘it doesn’t actually matter. My child has died!’ 

And of course, in COVID, there was hundreds of thousands of people dying all across the world. The colour of the font made absolutely no difference to any. So, at that point I thought I can’t, I cannot be in this environment anymore. I, and at that point I didn’t know whether it was a temporary cannot be here anymore or whether I permanently needed a shift in direction.[00:14:00] 

So, so I took a little bit of time out, but the end of my contract and just said, no, I’m going to take a little bit of time and just think for me carefully what comes next. Um, and I had about four months off and then went back to university. 

You know, And so for anybody sitting there thinking, God, how does she go back to work so quickly after Rachael died? I did, but then I had that break a little bit later on, and I needed that break. I just needed to recharge and reset and just kind of really think about what comes next. I went through a whole range of things. I thought, I’m going to go and do law because Rachael wanted to do law, and I’m going to do it in her name.

By the time I worked out, I would, how long it would take to do the, you know, the degree and the trainingship and the, you know, and qualify and, and, and I was going to be near retirement. I thought this is, this doesn’t feel like a very sensible option. Anyway, I looked at a whole lot of different paths and ended up at the sort of the career guidance stuff.

And while I was out in placement with qualified careers advisors, which One of the questions that came up was, you know, you’ll be training to [00:15:00] do this. What made that you shift from the HR roles into, into career guidance? And, well, there was one or two reasons. Rachael’s death was central to that decision making process.

And so I shared that. I shared that I was a bereaved parent. I shared that, you know, Rachael had died and et cetera. But the fallout from sharing that I was a brief parent with this advisor was awful. So she told my supervisor she didn’t think she could do anything with that she’d planned with me. Um, and I was really hurt and I was angry and I was confused and, you know, quite stunned actually by that feedback.

You know, as career guidance practitioners, we’re you know, we’re, we’re trained to be compassionate, be empathetic, to meet people with what we call unconditional positive regard, which basically means you go in with no expectations. These are, you know, you, you, you’re there to guide and to help. You’re there to actively listen and to try and support people in that, in their decision making.

And I just couldn’t believe that I was being judged in that way. You know, having had so many sort of [00:16:00] senior professional roles in the past, I did share my story. about Rachael, but I didn’t try to over dramatize it. I gave, I told her the information. Um, and I was ready to move on to what was coming.

You know, it didn’t need to be something derailed us for the rest of the day. Um, so I was really quite upset with her. 

I don’t understand. What, what was the problem? 

I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. I mean, I was on placement. I was there for, I was, With, for two weeks I was with different advisors. Every other advisor’s feedback was that I had, that I had been, that I’d turned up, I’d been professional, I had, you know, I had actively listened, I had given great advice, etc.

And I think it probably says more about her than it does about me, but I found it really difficult and, and, you know, It really bothered me. And in Scotland, we want to offer an all ages career guidance service. So while that individual was currently based in a school, she could have had bereaved [00:17:00] siblings, but while she was based in a school, she could have been placed in a central office where she may very well have met bereaved parents in the course of her work.

And I just thought, If this is the attitude that I’m going to be experiencing or other bereaved parents are going to be experiencing, then, then this, then this is wrong. So I then kind of asked a few other bereaved parents I’d met and sadly their experience of returning to work or seeking guidance or seeking advice had been a bit mixed..

One or two had had great experiences, but the majority of people had not. And I thought, right, okay, we need to do something about this. So rather than like most people just get annoyed and move on, I decided I was going back to university and upgraded my qualification to that master’s by doing the, the research project.

So, so that’s what kind of took me to, to doing it. Um, and when I started out looking at it, there was actually so little that’s been written about grief, bereavement and the impact on work. In fact, there’s only been six studies, which is just incredible. And even though six studies have not [00:18:00] looked specifically at bereaved parents, there’s been very little written at all.

So I’m kind of leading the way in some respects. And my aim is to share that research as widely as possible. I’ve spoken at the Career Development Institute’s um, sort of research practitioners conference. I’ve spoken at the student conference. I was a finalist for the National Institute of, I’m going to get this wrong, National Institute of Career Education and Counselling.

But I’ve had to present my work there to quite a wide range of sort of senior practitioners. And I have been invited to, to try and write some articles to get the work published. So that we’re reaching bigger and bigger audiences. And I think that can only be a positive thing. 

Most certainly. Can you tell us about your key findings and their implications?

Yeah, of course. So firstly, I’m seeing employers are usually not very good at managing child loss. But I think there’s a number of reasons for that. Depending on the size of the organisation, you may be the only bereaved parent that they will ever line manage in their entire career, you know, so it’s [00:19:00] not something that they’re going to be used to, to kind of handling. So more than likely, they’re going to go and speak to their HR department, if they’ve got an HR department. And then again, the HR department, depending on their experience, may not have had any experience of a bereaved parent either. So, you know, that, that’s the first thing to kind of say. 

We’ve now got Jack’s Law, which allows parents two weeks paid, you know, statutory paid bereavement leave. And, you know, for those of us who have lost a child, that doesn’t even, that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the amount of time that you’re likely to need. You know, in my situation, between the time of year and postmortems and all the rest of it, by two weeks, we hadn’t even got to the point of arranging a funeral, you know, so yes, it’s great we’ve got something, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. And, you know, many managers don’t, you know, know what to do, or what to say, or how to, or how best to support their kind of employees. And I think it’s really important, bereaved parents, if they can, take the lead. So, in saying that, what I mean is, telling your employer what you need.

And that [00:20:00] is going to be difficult, and I know, I don’t say that lightly, but if they don’t know, we have to tell them, ‘this is what I need from you. I need, I need you to not contact me for the next three months’, or ‘I need you to tell the other people that when I come back to work, that I want to talk about my child, or I don’t want to talk about my child, or I don’t want to talk about it in a general setting, but I’m happy to talk to people one to one’ because other employees won’t really know what to say, so they’re looking to their manager for guidance potentially. 

State early on how you want to be contacted as well. So it might be that you want to be contacted by email, or you might want to be contacted by phone, or you might much rather meet somebody in a neutral venue, or you might actually want that person to come to your home because you’re not ready to go out yet.

So don’t feel that you have to go to that place of work. They may ask you to do that, but you are perfectly within your rights to say, ‘no, I can’t cope with that right now. And if you want to speak to me, that’s fine, but you need to come to me’. [00:21:00] Agree a time frame for, for contact as well. So, you know, I would be saying potentially no more than once a month and perhaps even something like every three months.

Generally what will happen is employers will be guided by what’s on a fit note. So if you’ve got a fit note that’s signed you off by your GP, if your GP signs you off for three months, then it’s not unreasonable for your employer not to contact you till the end of that three month period. But some will feel because they’ve got a policy or a process to follow from, um, absence management or whatever that they need to speak to you every week. They don’t. So again, politely, just say ‘no, I can’t speak to you every week, that’s too much’, and agree what feels right for you. 

Is there a checklist out there that somebody could kind of pick up, if you’re a bereaved parent and you, you accept that you’ve got to take the lead on some of this, but you don’t know what you don’t know. So, Is there something out there, Jillian, that, that people can look at and go, right, these are the things I need to consider?

So there’s, there’s probably two [00:22:00] things you could do. You could ask for a copy of your own company’s absence management procedures. Now, if you work for a very small employer, they may not have one. So, you know, there’s not a legal obligation to do that for, I think it’s something like under 100 employees. But ACAS is your other place to go. ACAS has guides for employers and guides for employees on things like absence management. 

I think the other thing to flag is that, you know, depending on the circumstances, grief could be considered a disability. I’m going to get a little bit technical here, but there, and there are very clear parameters. But if you have developed anxiety or depression. If you’ve developed post traumatic stress disorder, you’ve got prolonged or complicated grief that’s been sort of diagnosed by a doctor or psychiatrist or whatever, and that’s had a significant impact on your everyday life for 12 months or more, then it is likely that that would be covered by the Equality Act to be considered to be a disability.

Okay, so the only people that can make that decision are in Employment Tribunal, but most employers, most good employers [00:23:00] will work on the basis that you will be covered by the Equality Act. And therefore they shouldn’t be making, they should be thinking about that in terms of contact, reasonable adjustments, etc.

But again, there’s lots of information about that on the ACAS website. But it’s just worth bearing in mind that if you, if you’re in sort of year 2 or year 3 and you’re still experiencing problems, there’s or you’ve had to take time off at different points of the year and you’re in that absence management process, then if you do have one of these mental health conditions as a result of grief or loss, which is entirely reasonable and possible, then it’s likely you’d be covered by the Equality Act. And that’s something to kind of bear in mind. 

That could be really helpful. Thank you. What else did you uncover? 

Yeah, so I think one of the other big things that I uncovered was that grief emotions can impact us for many years after our loss. One participant was 14 years post loss and said that they still experienced grief symptoms. And I think it’s really important that employers Doctors and people surrounding us kind [00:24:00] of know this, you know, as I said earlier, there’s this myth that once you pass that kind of first year of grieving, you’re going to be over it or you’ll move on or you’re going to be fine. And that simply isn’t true.

And I think these are the kind of things that employers particularly really need to understand. There are going to be days for years to come where going to work potentially might be impossible. You know, and these days aren’t always going to be ones that you can predict. You know, we just don’t know. These grief symptoms may, may change as well. You may find yourself getting increasingly kind of more angry about things, or you might find you really struggle to concentrate. You know, these are the kind of things that were kind of being flagged, but were being flagged for years, years to come. 

My job, which I did for 15 years as a self employed car came to an end in February this year. And I was able to save up some money and take a short break and do things like a podcast. Um, but I will be starting a new job in September and it’s difficult. Because there were a whole new [00:25:00] bunch of people who don’t know me. And I’ve got this most precious fact that I choose to share or not share with these people.

And so my anxiety levels are sky high, and I feel like I’m masking who I am. And it’s all very exhausting, and I’m six years into loss. So yeah, the impact continues, much beyond where anybody might expect it to, for sure. 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I started a new job. At the start of July. Um, and you know, even in an interview situation, because I think what are you going to, I worry, I worry about it because I just think, what are you going to ask me? Are you going to ask me why I’ve changed jobs or changed careers? What am I going to say? Do I talk about Rachael? Do I not talk about Rachael? And I get, and I got myself in a state before I’ve even started, you know, and this is me who’s, you know, been in these kind of professional roles and all the rest of it.

But, um, My mind just goes ‘woomph’ and when I was offered the job they said we could try and get you in before Christmas but you know we’ll probably start in January and I said [00:26:00] start in January I said because Christmas is a write off for me and that’s when I disclosed I was a bereaved parent and I have to say that the response was absolutely wonderful.

The hiring manager said to me, she asked about Rachael and then she said ‘What can I do to make your start better? Do you want me to tell other people in the team? Do you want me to say nothing? How do you, how do you want me to support you?’ You know, and that was just exactly what I wanted to hear. In this, this new role, again, I disclosed I was a bereaved parent.

I did it slightly differently because this, the person I was going to be working for wasn’t going to be there when I start, because it was July summer holidays. So I actually said to her, could I come in and see you beforehand? And I explained I’m a bereaved parent. And so I arranged to go and meet her for coffee before I started.

And I took the lead. I took the lead and I just said, I’m a bereaved parent and this is what I need from you. You know, in terms of letting the rest of the team know or not know. Because it’s important for me to be able to speak about Rachael. But I worked with another [00:27:00] bereaved parent at my last place of work. Her son died three years ago and she never wants to talk about her child in work. She’s spoken to me separately, but she never wants it brought up at work. So, you know, so I guess everybody’s going to be different. And that’s why I said earlier, it’s important for you as an individual to decide what, what is right for you.

Absolutely. Is there anything else from the research that you found is kind of key finding, um, that you want to highlight now? 

Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of comes down to if you’ve lost your, your only child. Um, and again, this was, this was really interesting. You know, I really thought long and hard about this and it was a particularly kind of striking sort of aspect when I was reviewing sort of existing literature.

So a person called Wonch and others, they conducted research on child loss and it is predominantly with women. So I will say that, but they found that low self confidence and low self esteem were common in women after the death of their child. That the loss of a baby or a child disrupts that kind of role of motherhood that many [00:28:00] women have identified and created meaning for even before they’re pregnant.

And that kind of grows and changes through pregnancy and then that parenting of a baby or a child. You bear that responsibility of feeling that you are the person or you’re responsible for keeping that child safe. And in some way you’ve, and then, you know, in some way you’ve failed. But you know, when that baby or child dies, particularly an only child that a mother can feel that catastrophic loss of their child, their future hopes and dreams, but also their self identity as a mother. 

And it raises so many questions. So who are, who are you now? Are you still a parent? Does your circle of friends and support change because your child is no longer here? And I’m going to say particularly friends that you’ve maybe made at the school gates or in the nursery or wherever that are as a result of having your child.

And then how does that impact your employment? So as I said, if your work, if your work or career was linked to your child in some way, with your child no longer there, what does that then mean for you as an individual? And I think that this idea of that kind of self identity and that loss of self [00:29:00] is huge.

Yeah. And that’s why I came up with the word ‘midowed’ because as an only child who lost their only child, it was devastating. And the nearest thing I could come up with was midowed. A mother that’s been widowed, because it’s what it felt like. That one significant relationship in your life has gone and your identity as a mother with it. I still remain a mother in some senses. I’m just not a mother in a day to day sense. My relationship with my child has now fundamentally and profoundly changed, but it’s, it’s a long ongoing process. And, you know, I wouldn’t say I’ve completely got to grips with this new identity. I’m not sure I ever will.

Yeah, absolutely. And, um, but I feel a very strong sense of still being Rachael’s mum, still being her parent, still advocating for her. 

Yeah. You know, she still has a presence in your life and therefore, you know, you are a mum. And I think that’s the thing. That, that’s the take home really for me as a, although I’m, my child is not alive and with me, I still very much represent Dan [00:30:00] and he’s still very present in my life.

So yeah, I get that. So in terms of returning to work, can you talk us through some thoughts, some ideas, some experiences around, you know, returning to work and what that could look like? 

I think the first thing to see is flexible working. Now is, is a statutory right from day one of employment. Things that you can ask for are things like shorter working hours, shorter working days. Now some employers will agree to do that for a temporary period of time without any impact to your pay. Others, if they’re smaller organizations, may feel that they have to adjust your pay accordingly. So I just want to put that on everybody’s radar. Bigger employers. Good employers will for a period of time because they’ll recognize the catastrophic loss you’ve experienced.

Others may not be able to because they may need to recruit somebody else to come in and fill the extra hours. Other things that you could ask for is working in a different office or a different location if that is possible. Um, so you’re not working alongside previous colleagues and that is something that certainly bigger organizations should be able to accommodate.[00:31:00] 

You might want to ask to work from home some of the time if the job that you do, that is something that can be facilitated. And pre Covid, lots of employers would have rejected that notion. Post Covid becomes very difficult because, you know, most of the workforce had to work from home in some capacity or another. So it is again, something that you can ask for. 

Um, other things that you could ask for are changes to your role. So again, on a temporary or a permanent basis. So for example, if your job involves answering the telephone, and that is something that you’re absolutely worried about and feel that you’re just unable to do, then you could say, could you be excused from that task for a period of time?

If you work in a shop or a sort of a customer facing environment and there are departments where you’re not in front of the customer, is that something that you could be doing? Could you go and maybe do an administrative role or work in a warehouse or work in the back office so that you’re not customer facing?

Particularly if you work in your local high street or whatever, you maybe don’t want people coming in and saying, [00:32:00] That’s the person whose son died or that’s the person whose daughter’s died or whatever. You may just want to work in the background or whatever. So these are all adjustments and things that you could absolutely ask for.

We had a little chat before we started recording and you talked about the differences for careers advice and guidance in the various parts of the United Kingdom. We’re not going to go into the details of each of those. We will put the details on the episode listing and the website. But are there some key messages for bereaved parents who might be looking to consider changing in their, their work and where they might go to to get that advice and what that might be like?

Absolutely. So I, I’ll go into career guidance mode just for, just for, for a brief moment. You might feel like me, you might feel like you want to go and do something completely different and you might also be sitting there thinking, I don’t know what that is. I’ve no idea what that something different might be.

So I’m going to say, firstly, write down a list of the things that you like to do. So think about all the elements of either a [00:33:00] current role or previous role that you really liked. And then why did you like them? How did they make you feel? Are these things you think you could do again? Now some of it might be, I really enjoyed that but I can never do that again.

That’s okay, that’s fine. What we’re trying to do is, is try to get some kind of parameters around what you would like to be interested in doing and the type of things that you don’t want to do or want to avoid. Then create another list of all the things that you’re good at. And if you’ve been out of work for a period of time, you can still do this.

So what I’m thinking here is transferable skills. So things like timekeeping, communication, listening, multitasking, which is something I think every parent needs to be good at. You might be involved in a charity or a club, where you’re doing a lot of organizing, or maybe you’re the person who puts the messages out on social media, or you organize refreshments.

So skills, think about skills, and they can be gained in so many different ways, so don’t just think about when you’re at work. Think about the skills that you’re gaining from all of that. Any other [00:34:00] activity that you’re involved in, things that you might do at home, you might be crafting, you might be doing jigsaws, that means you’ve got a mind for problem solving and strategic thinking.

So just start to think about all the kind of things that you enjoy doing and things that you’re good at. Once you’ve got that list, I would share it with family and friends because they will have things that they will want to add to that, I am sure. They might say, oh, you’ve downplayed that, you’re really good at this.

And what you’ll end up with is, at the end of it, is a really strong list. And then armed with that list of kind of, I suppose, strengths and skills and things that you like to do or things that you don’t like to do. Maybe speak to family, speak to friends, speak to neighbours about their jobs. Start to think about are there any kind of types of jobs that you think you might quite like to do or might be interested in doing.

The other thing you could think about is volunteering. Um, so again, if you’ve maybe not worked for a while or you’re keen to try something new, think about volunteering. And that volunteering could be an hour a week, it could be a day a month, or you could decide to throw yourself into it [00:35:00] wholeheartedly.

Again, it’s one of those things that you can be in control of, but it just allows you to kind of step, put a step in or put a toe into that new environment. Try something new, see what skills you get, you’ll also meet new people as well, and that will kind of broaden your, broaden your network and broaden your horizons.

Volunteering might be the place where you stop, you might not then look for paid employment, and that’s absolutely fine. It’s just about, I suppose, taking that tentative step back into real life, the real world, whatever kind of phrase you want to use. 

I would add to that, as somebody who for a number of years was a Volunteer Coordinator, if you go into your local Volunteer Centre, they can help you to refine some of those things that you were already talking about on those lists, because I would get a lot of people coming in, particularly when their children had started school and they’d be saying, ‘oh, I haven’t done anything for ages. I’ve been out of work. I’m not, not any good at anything’. And by the time we’d sat there for 10 minutes and thought about the things that they do in [00:36:00] their everyday life, they realized they’ve got a really comprehensive CV actually. And they’d worked out some of the things that were available and would fit in with their time.

And it is a great either first step or step, full stop. And at this point is a really good point as well that, you know, if you want to kind of speak to a careers advisor. So, you know, there’s lots of people think that careers advisors are only in schools and that’s not the case. So I work in a university, I’ve got friends who work in the job centre. I’ve got friends who work for charities as careers advisors, employability sort of specialists. So, so I’m going to say we are in lots of places, but adult services are not sort of more widely promoted to the general public. You know, if you were to stop people in the street, they wouldn’t know we exist or where to find us.

There are different offices depending which part of the country you’re in. So Skills Development Scotland, you’ve got Careers Wales, you’ve got Northern Ireland Direct, and then in England, it’s the National Careers Service. All four have a website, all four have telephone numbers, so you can speak to a qualified Careers Advisor.

Certainly in Scotland, you’ve then got [00:37:00] central offices that you can go and physically visit somebody as well. So these are all trained careers advisors there to help you try and kind of navigate this kind of world of work. There’s also, if you would rather do sort of something more sort of one to one, more bespoke, or um, sort of in a more private setting. The Career Development Institute has a register of registered career practitioners who see private clients. So again, that is UK wide. So again, that’s another resource that you can, you can tap into. 

If you’re in that situation where you’re where you’re feeling like you can’t stay at work because your employers are making it difficult for you, is there somewhere that people can go to, to beyond the organization to get some support? 

Yeah, so there’s a couple of things that strike me. So first of all, most, most companies will have a grievance policy or a grievance process. So you absolutely can, you absolutely can exercise that. That means somebody independent, still within the organization but an independent line manager [00:38:00] like would come in and would would sort of assess whether or not they felt that you had been treated appropriately or not. 

The other thing you could do if you have a union in your organization is to engage the union and speak to them about what you’re experiencing and how they can support you. That support could be in a number of ways they could obviously they can support you in speaking to your manager, they can support you in a grievance process but they may quite a lot of unions will also have you. Other kind of support by in terms of sort of maybe like a counselling helpline, they may have, um, sort of financial grants or subsidies or assistance and things that they can give to, to union members.

ACAS, that I talked about earlier, um, also offer an employee helpline. So they, they can also give you, um, probably some more structured legal advice if you feel that you’re not being looked after or treated in accordance with, I’m going to say, employment legislation, um, you know, and even the company’s own kind of policies and practices.

If you don’t feel that you’re being treated [00:39:00] appropriately, if you feel that you’re being, put under additional pressure, et cetera, then these are absolutely the people to speak to. You could also go to your GP and be asked to be, to be signed off as not fit for work. That is another option. That’s a conversation to have with your GP.

Um, if you choose to see that route in terms of being signed off as not fit for work. Then use that time while you’re off to explore some of the alternatives to, to go and have that conversation with the careers advisor, to go and have that conversations with citizens advice or the job centre or whoever the most appropriate people are, so that again, that you make any decisions about your future with that particular employer with armed with the information that you need. 

That’s fantastic. Thank you. I mean, these are all great things for people to kind of start having to think about if they’re looking to change direction. Are there any key messages, Jillian, that you want to just pass on to people, either as just one bereaved parent to another or as somebody who’s worked in HR and career development?[00:40:00] 

Yeah, I think I would probably just summarise a lot of what I’ve said already. So, you know, please don’t be afraid to be really clear with your employer. What support you need and what you want. And, as I said, it’s highly likely that they will also be nervous about having that conversation with you. Ask for any adjustments, whether that be hours of work, days of work, your duties, that you think are going to actually help you.

And also agree review periods. So, every three months, I think, is reasonable, but you might want to do it every month. Now, some small employers might struggle to accommodate a request and then you’ve got a decision to make, whether you stay or whether you go. And only you will know your family and financial circumstances.

So I’m not going to say to you, Oh, you must stay or you must, you must go. But if you’re in that situation where you’re just not sure that for me is a perfect time to go and speak to a careers advisor and look at the alternatives or go and speak to citizens [00:41:00] advice and find out if you were, if you were to leave, what benefits you could be eligible for, you know, even in for a temporary period of time, while you seek other employment?

If that’s what you’re going to do, don’t feel you have to stay somewhere without actually investigating what the alternatives are. If you don’t want to go to work, that’s fine. If you do want to go to work, that’s also fine. And you might not know what you want to do, and that’s absolutely fine too. And I think that’s a key message. There are no rules. 

What I would say though, is you will find it easier to go to work or easier to partake in work if you do something that has meaning and purpose for you. That, that came out really clear from the research. Now, some people find their meaning and purpose in something else like volunteering or fundraising or taking part in an activity and work was a thing that they had to do for financial sort of circumstances.

But what I’ve, what I see is the ideal scenario is you find something that gives you meaning and purpose that is also employ your employment base. But if it isn’t, you can manage your, you can manage [00:42:00] that work much better if you’ve also got something that, that, that gives you meaning and purpose and, and a reason to kinda get up in the morning.

And I think lastly, just to help our employers understand that grief is not finite. There’s no end, there is no end date. And so be kind to yourself. Don’t expect too much from yourself. Whatever you can manage right now is enough. 

That’s brilliant. Thank you ever so much. Uh, I think people will find this really valuable to listen to because it sort of brings to life some of the stuff that can be quite difficult or, or hard to understand when you just see a leaflet. So it’s really useful to hear it talked about. 

Jillian, one of the things that we always ask participants on our podcast is for a moment of gratitude. So we asked them, you know, what are you grateful for?

You know, and this is a really great question. And, um, I’ve gone through my mind, what am I grateful for? I’m grateful. And I’ve gone round and round and round in circles, but I’m going to say for me, I am grateful for music. I said earlier that, you know, Rachael and I had a shared love and a shared passion and I sing. [00:43:00] So I sing in a choir. I also play trumpet in a band. For me, they are my escape. They are the times for me just to put everything else at the door, for me to lose myself in a world. I love, particularly with singing, all the voices coming together. It’s a collaboration. You’re working with other people to create a sound.

It’s something that I’m extremely grateful for. I’m so happy to go and do it and it makes me very happy to, to bring, to bring that joy to other people. 

Oh, that’s lovely. Thank you so much for sharing that. Um, what a lovely thing to be grateful for. Jillian, we’ve covered everything. You’ve been brilliant. Thank you so much for doing that today. I really appreciate it. And, um, we just wish you the best of luck with whatever comes next, really. 

Thank you. 

All the resources we’ve mentioned are on our website and episode listing. Please let us have your thoughts about this episode. You can message us on socials or by email to hello@bereavedparentsclub.org.uk. [00:44:00]

This episode is dedicated to Rachael.