When a student is grieving, it may not be obvious
A bereaved student doesn’t necessarily look like someone who needs support.
They may still attend lectures. They may continue submitting work. They might laugh with friends, go out or appear to be managing normally.
But grief can affect concentration, memory, motivation, sleep, relationships and someone’s ability to manage everyday demands.
For university staff, this can create a difficult question:
How do you support a grieving student while staying within the boundaries of your role?
Bereavement training for university staff can help colleagues recognise how grief may present, feel more confident starting conversations and understand when practical adjustments, signposting or additional support may be appropriate.
How can grief affect university students?
Bereavement can happen at any stage of life, but experiencing a significant death while at university can bring particular challenges.
A student may be living away from their usual support network. They may need to travel home suddenly following a death and then return to university while the rest of their family remains elsewhere.
They may be grieving while simultaneously trying to keep up with lectures, placements, deadlines, exams, friendships and independent living.
Grief might show up as:
- difficulty concentrating or retaining information
- declining attendance
- changes in academic performance
- struggling to meet deadlines
- tiredness or disrupted sleep
- withdrawal from friends or university life
- anxiety or irritability
- reduced motivation
- appearing distracted or disengaged
- becoming overwhelmed by relatively small demands
- difficulty returning after time away
- seeming to cope initially but struggling later
None of these automatically means that grief is the cause.
But understanding how bereavement can affect functioning helps staff notice when a student may need a conversation rather than immediately interpreting behaviour as disengagement.
Use this form to tell us a little about your training needs. You’ll receive our Training Brochure + Indicative Pricing immediately – on screen and straight to your inbox.
Grief doesn’t follow the academic calendar
A student might experience a death immediately before an exam.
Another might be bereaved during the holidays and return for the next term appearing to be coping.
Someone else may manage relatively well initially and find things become harder months later.
Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays and significant life events can also bring grief back to the foreground.
There isn’t a neat point at which somebody should be “back to normal”.
A mitigating-circumstances deadline may end. Grief usually doesn’t.
Bereavement training can help staff understand the longer and less predictable ways that loss can affect a student.
What do you say to a grieving student?
University staff aren’t expected to become bereavement counsellors.
But lecturers, tutors, supervisors, accommodation teams, student services staff and other colleagues may be among the first people to notice that something has changed.
They may also be the person a student chooses to tell.
Training can help university staff:
acknowledge a bereavement naturally and compassionately
feel more confident starting a conversation
listen without feeling they have to fix the grief
avoid common assumptions about how someone should be coping
understand how grief can affect study and functioning
recognise individual and cultural differences in bereavement
maintain appropriate professional boundaries
understand when practical adjustments may help
recognise when additional support may be appropriate
signpost confidently to university and external services
The aim isn’t to give staff a counselling role.
It’s to help them know what they can usefully do within the role they already have.
Bereavement Training for Universities
The Loss Foundation provides expert-led bereavement training for universities and higher education staff.
Training can be tailored to the roles within your institution and the situations staff encounter.
This could include:
- contemporary understanding of grief and bereavement
- how grief can affect concentration, memory and motivation
- recognising less obvious signs that a student may be struggling
- starting a compassionate conversation
- listening and responding to difficult emotions
- supporting students returning after a bereavement
- understanding that grief can change over time
- individual and cultural differences in grief
- maintaining appropriate role boundaries
- practical support and reasonable flexibility
- recognising when further support may be appropriate
- effective signposting
- supporting staff affected by student deaths or bereavement
- creating a more grief-informed university culture
When grief looks like disengagement
This is one of the areas where greater bereavement understanding can make a practical difference.
A student stops contributing in seminars.
They miss several sessions.
Their work arrives late.
They don’t respond to an email.
From the outside, it can look like a problem with engagement, motivation or organisation.
Sometimes it will be.
But sometimes there is something else happening.
Grief can affect executive functioning, concentration and someone’s capacity to manage tasks that previously felt straightforward.
Bereavement training doesn’t mean assuming that every struggling student is grieving.
It helps staff develop the confidence to notice change, ask rather than assume, and know what to do if bereavement is part of the picture.
Returning to university after someone dies
Coming back to university can itself be difficult.
A student may have spent time at home surrounded by family and then return to accommodation where nobody knew the person who died.
Friends may not know what to say.
Lectures resume.
Deadlines continue.
The student’s external life may look much as it did before, while internally something significant has changed.
Others may worry about mentioning the death because they don’t want to upset them.
This can leave bereaved students feeling particularly isolated.
Staff don’t need to repeatedly ask a student about their grief. But acknowledging what has happened and making it clear that a conversation is possible can matter.
When someone in the university community dies
Universities may also need to respond when a student or member of staff dies.
The impact can extend across friendship groups, courses, accommodation, societies, departments and staff teams.
Some people may have known the person extremely well. Others may be surprised by how strongly the death affects them despite having had a more distant relationship.
Staff may need to balance:
- communicating sensitively about the death
- supporting students who knew the person
- recognising different responses within the community
- maintaining privacy and appropriate boundaries
- signposting to support
- managing practical and academic considerations
- recognising their own response to the death
A grief-informed approach can help universities respond consistently while recognising that there will never be one response that suits everybody.
Supporting university staff too
Bereavement within universities isn’t only a student issue.
A tutor may have supported a student for several years before they die.
A staff member may be supporting multiple bereaved students while experiencing a bereavement in their own life.
Student-facing teams may repeatedly hear difficult experiences of death, trauma and loss.
Training can help staff understand emotional boundaries, cumulative exposure and when supporting someone else begins to affect their own wellbeing.
Being supportive doesn’t require carrying somebody else’s grief home.
Expert-led bereavement training for university staff
Our bereavement training is developed by Dr Erin Hope Thompson MBE, Clinical Psychologist and founder of The Loss Foundation.
Erin has extensive experience across the NHS, private and third sectors. Our training translates contemporary psychological understanding of grief into practical knowledge staff can use in everyday interactions with students and colleagues.
Training can be delivered online or in person and tailored to your university, staff groups and existing student support provision.
Who is university bereavement training for?
Training can be adapted for:
Academic staff and personal tutors – recognising grief and responding confidently when students disclose a bereavement.
Student support and wellbeing teams – strengthening specialist understanding of grief and bereavement.
Accommodation and residential teams – supporting students within the environment where they live.
Professional services staff – recognising when bereavement may be affecting a student’s engagement and knowing where to direct them.
Placement and course teams – understanding the practical impact bereavement can have on study and professional placements.
Managers and HR teams – supporting university employees affected by bereavement.
We can also work with universities seeking to develop a consistent institution-wide approach to bereavement.
Bereavement training for university staff online and in person
Training can be delivered to an individual department or staff group, or developed as part of a wider programme across your university.
We can tailor the content around your student population, existing support pathways and the situations staff currently find most difficult to navigate.
Contact us about bereavement training for university staff
If you’d like staff to feel more confident recognising and responding to grief while maintaining appropriate boundaries, we can develop training around the needs of your university.
Use this form to tell us a little about your training needs. You’ll receive our Training Brochure + Indicative Pricing immediately – on screen and straight to your inbox.
