Browsing by Subject "Lapsi"

The aim of this study was to examine the experiences of young adults who lost a loved one in primary school. The purpose is to increase understanding of how the interviewees feel about the school offering them support after the death of a loved one and how the interviewees' grief affected their schooling. Grief as a topic has been studied multidisciplinarily and internationally a lot. According to previous research, a person’s conscious or unconscious understanding of grief influences the way he or she encounters a grieving person. Foreign studies have found that a school has many opportunities to support a child grieving the death of a loved one. Finnish research on the subject is not available. The study was conducted as a qualitative study and its background philosophy was the interpretative phenomenological research tradition. The data consisted of thematic interviews of five young adults aged 18–29 and contained oral history based on experiences. The data was analyzed according to the six-step model of interpretive phenomenological analysis by Smith et al. (2009). Based on the analysis, the interviewees' experiences of the support received from the school were divided into five themes: the school as an administrator of everyday life, the support provided by student welfare services, the importance and support of one's own teacher, consideration of grief in the school's everyday life and practices, and improvement suggestions for schools. The effects of grief on school attendance were also divided into five themes: the needs and effects of the bereavement home situation on school attendance, studying at school after the death of a loved one, expressions of grief and grief reactions at school, moments when grief surfaced and the importance of the class community and friends. Although the results were divided into themes for the analysis, they partially overlapped in many places. The interviewees perceived the school's support as being divided into support related to the continuity of everyday life and support for dealing with grief and emotions. Support of the continuity of everyday life was experienced as the main and functional support from the school, but support for dealing with grief and emotions was needed more than what had been received according to experiences of interviewees. For this reason, the conclusions consider the functionality and accessibility of student welfare services and the need to develop school-specific guidelines to support dealing with a student who is grieving the death of a loved one.