In the US, one in 11 children will lose either a parent or a sibling by the time they turn 18. Rates of bereavement are even higher for children in racially and ethnically minoritized groups, and for those in socioeconomically marginalized families.

Since 2008, the New York Life Foundation has been working alongside community partners all across the US to support bereaved children through their grief journeys. This year, the Foundation is partnering with the Association of Children's Museums (ACM) to highlight the unique role children's museums can play in helping children and families facing loss. During Children's Grief Awareness Month (which occurs every November), the Foundation and ACM are launching "Healing with Play," a pilot initiative during which a cohort of a dozen children's museums will share resources, offer guidance on age-appropriate language, and host bereavement-related events and activities that honor grieving children.

Building Resilience Together

"Healing with Play" is part of a broader project called Building Resilience Together, which seeks to identify effective practices for supporting bereaved families-and to devise strategies for making these practices more intentional and widespread across the children's museum field. In many ways, the project is consistent with the goals of the "compassionate communities" movement, which seeks to reorient how we think about, talk about, and respond to death, dying, and bereavement. The movement's core premise is that we all have a responsibility to care for each other during times of loss-that this is "not simply the task of health professionals." This premise reflects a number of key findings in recent bereavement research, including:

• Most bereaved people do not require any kind of professional clinical assistance;
• Social support plays a critical role in bereavement outcomes;
• The social needs of the bereaved are often overlooked; and
• Community capacities for providing bereavement support are currently under-developed.

One of the movement's key goals is to strengthen partnerships between professional bereavement services and community-based organizations, so that targeted grief interventions can be launched "from the ground up." By helping everyone better recognize and respond to loss, compassionate communities can increase the availability of emotional, informational, and practical support around grief.

Museums have been explicitly identified as a pillar of the compassionate communities movement. Children's museums have a great deal of experience when it comes to helping children and families cope with loss, and are well positioned to provide bereavement care to those grieving the death of a loved one. Because they offer families a safe place for conversation, emotional expression, and embodied learning, much of the work children's museums are already doing speaks to the needs of bereaved children- whether acknowledged as such or not. Building Resilience Together seeks to advance the range of ways children's museums serve bereaved families.

Our Role

As researchers and evaluators for the project, we've been reviewing the bereavement literature, speaking with families who've attended children's museums during times of grief, and learning about the experiences of children's museums who are already active in the bereavement space. This landing page provides links to (and brief descriptions of) all of the work we've published through Building Resilience Together.

Healing with Play Website

To support those museums participating in "Healing with Play," we helped build the initiative's official website, which shares a variety of tools and resources children's museums can make use of to better care for the bereaved visitors who enter their doors every day. On the website's resource library page, children's museums can find a number of accessible materials related to:

• Staff training and capacity building
• Collaboration and partnering
• Program and exhibit design
• Community engagement
• Caregiver support

The website also includes a page full of resources for families, sharing a variety of media (including picture books, chapter books, and movies) caregivers can use to introduce children (specifically those aged 0-8) to concepts such as death, loss, separation, and grief.

Case Studies

To learn how individual children's museums integrate themes of grief and loss into their programs, exhibits, and events, we're interviewing leaders from institutions already active in the bereavement space. Key findings from these interviews are then published as formal case studies-the goal of which is to deepen understandings of what effective bereavement-related support can look like within children's museum settings.

The Grand Rapids Children's Museum

Describing an exhibit called Weathering Emotions, this case study offers practical guidance on ways to anchor death, grief, and other difficult subjects in playful settings.

The Children's Museum of Memphis

Highlighting the museum's experience hosting a "Day of Resilience," this case study shares ideas for positive coping strategies that help children experiencing loss and grief.

The Providence Children's Museum

Discussing different types of social and emotional learning programs, this case study highlights activities, techniques, and tips for building resilience "before families need it."

The Children's Museum of Fond Du Lac

Focusing on an annual event called "Super Saturday," this case study shares a variety of activities that can help children find the "strengths and skills inside them" to help work through grief.

Trends Reports

Volume 8 of the ACM Trends Report series offers research-backed guidance to children's museums and other cultural institutions looking to contribute to emerging community-based responses to bereavement and loss.

Trends 8.1

The first issue of this series presents key research findings from the literature on bereaved children. Offering a foundation for bereavement interventions, it explains key concepts, highlights bereaved children's needs, and shares general information on the kinds of experiences and supports that can help children overcome the grief associated with the death of a loved one.

Trends 8.2

The second issue of this series looks at how children's museums can harness the therapeutic power of play to benefit the many bereaved children who walk through their doors every day. It also highlights two other actions children's museums can take to provide for the needs of the bereaved: capacity building and resource sharing.

Trends 8.3

The third issue of this series highlights the experiences of four children's museums active in the bereavement space, detailing what these institutions have learned about what makes for effective bereavement support. Presented as a set of best practices, the findings shared here are aimed at building the field's bereavement-related capacities. By adapting these practices, children's museums can become a key resource for families experiencing grief, loss, and trauma-in the process helping ensure that no child grieves alone.

Let's Put it To Work

To effectively meet the needs of bereaved children, we need to build more community-based spaces of support, and to make grief-related care more of a collective responsibility. We need to create and mobilize as many grief-supportive resources within our communities as possible, so that adults, children, and families are better prepared to cope with death and other types of loss. And we need to normalize the seeking and accepting of help from all manner of social institutions (including schools, churches, workplaces, care homes, etc.) in times of grief.

If you work in a children's museum (or any cultural institution) and are curious to learn more about "Healing with Play," please write to our ACM partners at Blythe.Romano@childrensmuseums.org. And be sure to check back here frequently, as the above list will be updated whenever we have new findings to share!

About the ACM-Knology Partnership

This project is part of our ongoing partnership with ACM. Since 2016, we have collaborated with ACM on a number of projects, and have helped revolutionize the association's approach to data collection and reporting. Through the ACM Trends Report series, we regularly publish research-to-practice briefs that use comparative data to advance museums' financial stability, professional accountability, and service to their communities. In 2022, the ACM Trends Data Hub was developed from the wealth of knowledge that emerged from data analysis. The Data Hub allows museums to access their own data, compare their museum to field-wide averages, and benchmark their museum to other museums of similar scale or location throughout the U.S. In addition to the ACM Trends Program, which includes the reports and data hub, the partnership with Knology has expanded to include researching emerging trends in the field, such as online programming, the role of trust, and evaluation support on other ACM initiatives.