How to Look After a Grieving Elephant (and other social animals)

A free CPD session for teachers & workshop leaders who work with children & young people exploring the topic of grief.

At this CPD session you’ll learn all about the How to Look After a Grieving Elephant (and other social animals) resource and how you can implement this project in your schools or youth setting.

You’ll hear from Jenny Gaskell, the artist who designed and created the project and you’ll receive a free copy of the resource for your school or workshop setting.

About the Resource

Adults can often find it difficult to talk to children about death and grief. One of the reasons for this is because adults are keen to protect children from pain and distress. However, what we have learned from working with Child Bereavement UK is that avoiding the subject of death and grief can unfortunately cause confusion, shame, and ultimately more distress for the child.

From September 2026, the UK Government made it mandatory to teach children about the subject of grief within a school setting, to better equip children with the knowledge and strategies to cope with grief and support others.

The How to Look After a Grieving Elephant (and Other Social Animals) teacher’s resource aims to help children talk about death and grief in a fun and creative setting even if they have not experienced bereavement in their own lives. We encourage children’s curiosity and agency by calling them animal investigators and encouraging them to become experts in animal grief behaviour.

The resource also reminds children that grief can create uncomfortable emotions but that these emotions are normal and natural - even some other members of the animal kingdom experience them! It encourages children to think about how we can be kind to someone experiencing grief. We hope that these ideas will help to tackle cases of bullying which many grieving children have reportedly experienced in school settings.

The resource is not designed to act in place of specialised bereavement support, nor is it designed to be used by children in crisis. We recommend that any children who are struggling with a recent bereavement seek out support via Child Bereavement UK.

How to Look After a Grieving Elephant (and other social animals) is a project created by Jenny Gaskell, produced by Heart of Glass and Wonder Arts with support from Willowbrook Hospice, Child Bereavement UK and Allanson Street Primary School.

*Spaces for this CPD session are limited to 2 per school/organisation

Where: Allanson Street Primary School

Time: 4.00pm - 5.30pm

Cost: FREE