Courses and Training Available in the UK – Funeral Service, Embalming and Bereavement

(Current as at October 2001)

Understanding Loss and Grief

This pack provides effective training support for anyone who works with the bereaved, and is particularly useful in the helping and caring professions. The material helps trainees understand the nature of loss and grief and its impact on both those who grieve and those who care for them. Topics include: What is loss?; how do we grieve - expressions of grief; parents and children; the role of medication; post-traumatic stress disorder; the importance of ritual in grieving.

Format 150 pages A4 ISBN 1 85356 659 4                     £125

Available from the National Extension College (see below)

Introduction to Counselling Theory

With thorough activity-based sections covering all the main approaches, this pack will enable users to compare, contrast and evaluate the different theories, as well as explain their role in relation to both experience and action. Topics include: Freud and the psychodynamic approach; developments in psychodynamic theory; behavioural theory; humanistic theory; cognitive theory; introduction to transactional analysis; theories of loss and grief; Gestalt theory and therapy.

This is available as a certificated distance learning course by the NEC and accredited by the Associated examining Board.

Format 180 pages A4 ISBN 1 85356 618 7                     £175

Available from the National Extension College (see below)

The Counselling Listener

The Counselling Listener – uses audio and printed resources to stimulate thought and discussion on a wide range of counselling issues

Contact: National Extension College, The Michael Young Centre, Purbeck Road, Cambridge CB2 2HM

Telephone 01223 400300 Fax: 01223 400231

Home page: www.nec.ac.uk

Death & Dying

Aims: To provided up-to-date, practice-related material on palliative care and symptom control; to help students to understand the physical, emotional, psychological and social needs of bereaved people, and support them in professional and person settings; to help students to understand and evaluate some concepts used frequently in dealing with death and dying, such as “a good death”, “autonomy and dignity”, “truth-telling”, and “partnership and teamwork”; to expose students to a wide range of cultural and historical practices about death; to familiarise students with some important legal and ethical concepts such as informed consent to treatment; to encourage students to establish and maintain their own personal and formal support networks.

A 200-hour course/students pack. Four 96 page workbooks (Life & Death; Preparing for Death; Caring for Dying People; Bereavement: Private Grief and Collective Responsibility)

Two small 100-hour study packs also available

K260X Mortality and Bereavement

K260Y Preparing and Caring

Contact: The Information Officer Department of Health & Social Welfare the Open University Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK7 6AA

Tel: 01908 653743

MA (Master of Arts) Death and Society

A unique multi-disciplinary Master programmes that explores how societies – past and present- organise, theorise, symbolise and ritualise death of their members.

University of Reading Department of Sociology, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AA

Tel: 01189 318519 Fax: 01189 318922

www.reading.ac.uk/DeathSoc/home.htm

Bereavement Counselling

Working with the bereaved deals with a very important area in counselling work. The sense of loss, intense grief and depression that follow bereavement can be almost unbearable, and the need for counselling is often a desperate one. Subjects included in the course: attitudes to death; what can be done to help? Working with children and the male client; bereavement; exploring grief and letting go; what is grief? Adjusting to violent death.

A correspondence course of 6 lessons.

BSY Group Stanhope Quare, Holsworthy, Devon EX22 6DF

Tel: 0800 731 9271 Fax: 01409 259215

www.bsygroup.co.uk

Enabling Others to Cope with Loss

Explores your own feelings about loss and bereavement and examines the findings so that you can use them to help others who are grieving. A Scottish Qualification distance learning course lasting nine weeks with tutor marked questions, assignments and two college based assessments.

Contact: Stevenson College Bankhead Avenue Edinburgh EH11 4DE

Tel: 0131 535 4600 Fax: 0131 535 4666

Home page: www.stevenson.ac.uk

Aspects of Death and Dying

Taught through a series of lectures, seminars and discussion, the aim of the course is to provide a multi-disciplinary framework to consider the experience of death and dying within the broader cultural context.

Faculty of Continuing Education, Birkbeck College, University of London, 28 Russell Square London WC1B 5QD

Tel: 020 7631 6669 Fax: 020 7631 6686

www.bbk.ac.uk/fce

Minefields Training Seminars

A range of seminars and workshops for those in the caring professions

Mindfields Seminars The Barn Chalvington Hailsham East Sussex BN27 3TD

Tel: 02323 811440 Fax: 01323 811486

www.mindfields.org.uk

Membership of the British Institute of Embalmers

Full Membership of the BIE is gained by examination. Examinations are set by the National Examinations Board of Embalmers, or by the European & International Examinations Board of Mortuary Science. Following success in both the theoretical and practical elements of the examination, the successful applicant will be considered for inclusion into full membership at a duly convened meeting of the National Council.

NVQ Funeral Service

National Vocational Qualifications in funeral service at level 2 and level 3 are currently available through City & Guilds of London Institute.

Registered candidates are assessed in the workplace where naturally occurring evidence is gathered by a workplace assessor who has been approved by City & Guilds. After meeting all the necessary criteria and, following completion of their portfolio of evidence, and subsequent submission of evidence for external verification, the successful candidate is awarded the respective level certificate.

Also available: advice on a range of business course available from the Institute of Management, Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, UK colleges of higher/further education and universities.