Education Week - April 27, 2022 - 6

Students Need More Support From Schools
When a Caregiver Dies
By Sarah D. Sparks
More than 211,000 children and teenagers have lost
their primary caregivers due to COVID-19, and experts
argue that schools need long-term supports to keep those
students on track academically and emotionally.
The New York Life Foundation, which tracks childhood
bereavement through a partnership with Judi's House/
JAG Institute, found that after the first year of the
pandemic, the number of children who lost a parent or
sibling before age 18 jumped from 1 in 14 to 1 in 13.
An international study published earlier this month
in the journal JAMA Open finds that losing a parent
was associated with lower grades in school, even after
accounting for other potentially negative issues such as
family poverty. The researchers used 25 years of sibling
data from Sweden to compare grades for siblings whose
caregivers died before or after they reached the end of
their compulsory schooling age.
" Schools do think about the short-term things like,
how do I welcome the child back to the class; how do I
show that the other children and myself are supportive, "
said Irwin Sandler, a psychologist who studies supports
after caregiver loss at the REACH Institute in Arizona
State University in Tempe, and wrote a commentary
accompanying the JAMA study. " But the domain of longterm
support is a somewhat more difficult issue. "
That's because, although the death of any family or
friend can be traumatic, students who lose a caregiver
are at risk of a " cascade " of trauma, according to Dan
Treglia, associate professor of practice at the University
of Pennsylvania. Losing a parent could also mean losing
financial stability, having to move to a different school
or home, and experiencing the stress and grief of their
remaining family.
" And so, suddenly, you have yet another disruption, "
Treglia said. " They experience social isolation as
they're moving away from family and friends and their
community. "
Catherine Jaynes, senior director of the COVID
Collaborative, which tracks caregiver loss during the
pandemic, said there is no widespread system for
identifying children who have lost a caregiver, and social
distancing during the pandemic has limited many of the
informal ways schools find that out. " Funerals and a lot of
faith-based rituals have not been able to be completed, "
Jaynes said. " And now we're hearing there's some stigma
about those individuals that have died ... so there might
be an inclination to not let folks know. "
Students of color are at risk
" It is important to note that racial disparities in COVID
caregiver loss are even larger than the disparities in
nonwhite populations when they're dying from COVID19, "
Treglia said.
People of color have died from the coronavirus at
disproportionately higher rates and at younger ages than
their white peers, which means they're more likely to
have had children still living at home. Moreover, children
of color are more likely to live in a multigenerational
household, in which grandparents play larger caregiving
roles, and in multifamily households.
While COVID-19 has caused a sudden spike of
caregiver deaths, students also regularly lose parents
to cancer and other illnesses, military service, and the
ongoing gun violence and opioid crises, among others,
Jaynes noted. " Across the age spectrum, we know the
importance of having a support system for that child to
school registration forms to ensure more students are
found and making that information part of a child's
permanent record if they change schools or districts.
include the home, the school, the community faith-based
organizations ... as they go through their grief process. "
New York Life's Grief-Sensitive Schools Initiative
provides grants and training for a network of schools and
districts around the country to develop clearer crisis and
bereavement plans and more-holistic supports for students.
Here are some recommendations from experts on how
schools can support grieving students:
* Identify students systemically. Teachers are the
" eyes and ears " for finding the children and teens in
trouble and providing the first line of help, said Treglia,
but they need training in identifying students. Jaynes
and Maria Collins of the New York Life Foundation also
call for adding a question on family loss to standard
* Provide supports beyond grief. Schools should
consider long-term mentoring and academic tutoring
in addition to counseling and other mental health
supports, Jaynes advised.
* Consider the whole family. Sandler noted that
support from surviving caregivers is the most important
factor in a child's resilience after a caregiver's loss. " You
have to remember the surviving caregivers are grieving,
too. So they're very busy, they have a lot on their plate,
both practically and emotionally, " he said. " Direct
outreach from the school can be helpful. "
* Make sure the student doesn't feel alone. Sandler
recommended schools connect students to others who
have lost family members.
Caregiver Loss Hits Students of Color Hardest
During the Pandemic
SOURCE: COVID Collaborative Caregiver Loss Data as of March 24, 2022
6 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 27, 2022 | www.edweek.org
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - April 27, 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 27, 2022
