Why should you choose the Flower of Hope Program?

  • Because children too need professional help in processing their losses
  • Because this work requires an adequate place, toys and creative tools
  • Because the necessary knowledge needs to be spread among professionals working with children

What is the Flower of Hope Program?

The project organised by the Napfogyatkozás Egyesület (English: Eclipse Association) offers help and support for one of the most personal and most difficult problems: grieving children who have lost a close relative. Based on a Finnish method, we give support for processing loss to such children, working in peer groups with thematised sessions and using creative activities and games. Besides children, we also support the parents and we organise sensitivity trainings, as requested by professionals working with the families on educational, social and healthcare platforms. It’s important for the impacted families and professionals working with them to be able to access the sessions for free.

In Hungarian society even adults handle death as a taboo. Children are often left alone with their grief, and what’s more the institutions don’t have complete knowledge about the different features of children’s grief, and at what ages these aspects may occur. Most of the time neither the parents nor the professionals know how to help children in processing their loss.

What happens at a children’s mourning group?

The essence of the Finnish method is that children will be helped in processing their loss by a peer group of children with similar stories. The thematised group sessions are organised weekly, in closed groups, and there are eight occasions in total.

Children in the group will:

  • meet other children who experienced a similar loss
  • share their experience with peers
  • learn about mourning and death
  • become visible, and receive attention within the group
  • be able to share their solitude and distance resulting from their grief
  • find words that describe their feelings and learn how to deal with them
  • play and use their imagination and fantasy
  • be encouraged to find a new kind of relationship with their lost relative
  • get help to find their reserves of strength and to notice the positive things in life, which will reinforce their self-respect and self-confidence

Why is the parental group important?

Parents who bring their children to the group sessions are grieving themselves, and besides handling their own pain they want to help their children as well as they can. A widowed parent may face a lot of difficulties, and a peer group can be very supportive for them. Parents accept each other with love and listen to each other, and help each other by sharing their experiences. Our aim is to create and strengthen peer groups by organising them so that they will keep in contact even after our sessions are over, and people will be able to count on each other.

How do we help professionals?

We organise professional days where we train them on the characteristics, importance and possibilities of supporting grieving children. They will acquire comprehensive knowledge and skills that will be invaluable in their everyday work.

The agenda of the professional days:

  • Characteristics and age-group specialties of children’s grief and processing loss
  • Signs and consequences of unprocessed losses, drug abuse risk
  • Supportive communication with the impacted child and the environment
  • The role of the community in processing loss, preventing exclusion/being excluded
  • The lack and possibility of ceremonies

We recommend our professional days to professionals working with children and families in education, social and healthcare areas, who would like to support their clients and students efficiently in handling their losses (death, divorce, illness).

Would you like to learn more about the Flower of Hope Program?

Read on for more information!

The Flower of Hope Program started in Budapest, where, thanks to donations and charity campaigns, we have been organising groups for five years, in which almost 70 families have participated. We organise post-event meetups for the families that attended our sessions regularly, in order to strengthen peer relationships. We worked out the group-leader training three years ago and we are starting trainings regularly. Almost 30 professionals graduated from our trainings throughout the country. Our goal for the future, namely spreading children’s mourning groups nationwide, is progressing well. At our professional days we help professionals and professional communities working with children by giving them the necessary basic knowledge.

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