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NBCP Resources Toolkit

Welcome to the National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP) Resources Toolkit.

Sands leads the NBCP in collaboration with bereaved families, other charities and Royal Colleges, providing health care professionals with frameworks, tools and educational resources to support excellent care.

One of Sands’ core objectives is to ensure that every bereaved parent receives the highest standard of bereavement care possible. Feedback to Sands from healthcare professionals has highlighted a need for a specific toolkit of resources to support the implementation and embedding of the NBCP.

We have developed this toolkit in order to equip healthcare professionals with the resources they need to help bereavement care standards to ‘stick’, and to embed the NBCP standards rather than seeing these as just a project.

There are four parts to the toolkit: Parent Engagement, Being Strategic, Working Together, and Staff Wellbeing.

We are grateful to everyone who has contributed to the development of this toolkit, including Gail Johnson (former RCM Education Advisor), the NBCP Core Group, the Professional Advisory Group, and the healthcare staff and Donna Ockenden who generously contributed their time to be interviewed in the videos.

Parent Engagement resource toolkit

Parent Engagement resource toolkit.

Parent engagement needs to be at the forefront of shaping and improving bereavement care services. In this module, we’ll focus on the ways in which you can engage with parents, and build local audits out of parent voice. Involving parents through clinical review, written feedback, or local support groups run by the NBCP partners can help you understand how well your service is meeting the needs of local parents, and help you identify both what you are doing well and what could be improved.

Being Strategic resource toolkit.

Being Strategic resource toolkit.

Embedding the NBCP requires strategic thinking and planning. In this module, we’ll take you through some key steps in making an effective ‘business case’ to support you in implementing change.

Working Together resource toolkit.

Working Together resource toolkit.

It’s important to think of the bereavement care team as the different professionals a parent will meet on their journey through bereavement care. Working together as a team to ensure that bereavement care is compassionate, high-quality and evidence based is necessary in establishing and maintaining an excellent bereavement care service. This module explores some of the key challenges and ideas around working together to influence and lead change.

Staff Wellbeing resource toolkit.

Staff Wellbeing resource toolkit.

The challenges of supporting families are immense and practitioners at all levels need to identify strategies to maintain their own wellbeing and to acknowledge when to seek help and from where. It is important to recognise and acknowledge that the death of a baby affects many people, not only families, but yourself as a member of bereavement support, as well as your colleagues. In this module, we’ll discuss some different approaches to staff wellbeing in bereavement care.