Support for professionals

As well as providing support to Alder Hey Staff, we are here to support any professional who has been bereaved through child loss, who may need help supporting a bereaved family or child, (teachers for example) and emergency service professionals who may encounter child death. If you are a professional in any line of work and require guidance around child bereavement, grief, and loss, we can help.

Clinical supervision

We provide clinical supervision to a range of professionals from different disciplines both within and outside the Trust. Clinical supervision provides an opportunity for the supervisee to talk openly about their patient/client work free from fear of discipline or punishment. In this setting, the supervisee will feel more able and confident to raise concerns about aspects of their work which they are concerned about.

The most effective clinical supervision is provided separate from the supervisee’s usual line-management and formal reporting relationships. The aim of clinical supervision is to facilitate insight, provide advice and offer guidance free of any remit to report back to the employer. In this way clinical supervision provides the supervisee with:

Time and space to review, monitor and evaluate their own practice
Time and space to work with painful and difficult issues
A different and objective perspective
Support through periods of uncertainty
Acknowledgement of good practice
Someone to challenge them to consider different/ better practice where things could be done differently/better
Someone to ensure that the supervisee is attending to their own needs and preventing carer-fatigue and the more serious conditions associated with prolonged duress and burnout

Staff can self-refer for supervision or be referred by their manager. For more information feel free to contact the Alder Centre directly.

Support for Alder Hey staff

We are here to support anyone affected by the death of a child and that includes Alder Hey Staff. The Snowdrop Team are available to provide support to staff after the death of a child and able to provide a listening ear and debriefs where appropriate.

Our Counsellors at The Alder Centre, working closely with Staff Advice and Liaison Service (SALS) provide an in-house counselling service to any member of Alder Hey staff. This may be related to bereavement but, we also offer support around work and non-work related issues like stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship problems.

Our team members are trained to offer a range of interventions including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), person-centred and solution focused therapy. All of our counsellors are registered members of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists.

Trust staff are generally offered six to eight counselling sessions although this may be reviewed and extended as appropriate. There is no charge for our service and we operate within strict boundaries of confidentiality. Staff can self-refer, be referred SALS, by their manager or by the Occupational Health provider, Team Prevent.