Death notification with children after sudden parental death: The practice experiences, interventions, support and training needs of emergency room social workers.

Sudden death occurs frequently in the emergency department. Parents of young children are not immune. Unexpected death often creates a crisis in the family system and the death notification, in and of itself, can be a trauma for survivors. Complicating this, young children are reliant on the care of their parents, and parental death fundamentally disrupts a child’s sense of security and safety. Social workers in the emergency department are often involved in providing death notification, and the five participants of this study were often the sole professional responsible for death notification with children. Participants’ narratives suggested that their preparedness was incongruent for this responsibility. Despite this, participants self-created their own practice, which intriguingly paralleled the guidelines found in the literature as well as one another’s independent reports. Participants also described a situational and customized style of intervention with children and families that was evidence of their creativity and flexibility.