Challenges for services dealing with families bereaved following a drug or alcohol-related death.

What is it about?

This paper draws on research into families bereaved by alcohol or drugs to examine how services , including public, private and charitable organisations, and agencies respond to this neglected and stigmatised group. The research involved 100 interviews with bereaved adults, followed by 6 focus groups with 40 practitioners. From the data the article illustrates how these bereaved people may meet with inadequate, unkind, and discriminatory responses from services, while having to navigate unfamiliar, fragmented, often bewildering, and time-consuming procedures. We found service failures to reflect practitioners’ poor understanding of substance use bereavement as well as challenges of inter-agency working. In identifying both service success and failure we a) produced a ‘map’ of the relevant services, and b) identified two challenges for services responding to these bereaved people. These are: information and support; and compassion, language and sensitive judgement. The paper summarises the findings relating to these two areas and their contribution to both research and practice relating to inter-agency working.

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Why is it important?

These bereaved families have been neglected in research, policy and practice as well as being marginalised and stigmatised by wider society, including the services that would be expected to support them.

Perspectives

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As a bereavement researcher I am particularly interested in and concerned about those bereavements that are harder to share with others and find support, i.e. leading to disenfranchised grief. Those bereavement following a drug and/or alcohol related death are arguably one of the most neglected groups of bereaved people I have come across. In addition the bereaved person, in dealing with this kind of death, must negotiate a particularly lengthy and frustrating process. It is also a process that involves a range of services that often do not join up, with those working for services having a poor understanding of what these bereaved people are coping with. Few people are aware of what this kind of death/loss involves for those left behind. Therefore this article reveals an aspect of life that tends to be very hidden from view.

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