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Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord German this evening not because I am at all qualified in the intricacies of the working of the current benefit system or any of the proposals. I speak because I know a little bit about children’s grief and the distress following the death of a family member. In my case, one daughter was killed and her younger sister and I lived through the ensuing years and the aftershocks of extreme grief. I was lucky to be married to an extremely supportive second husband, who had himself suffered the death of his beloved elder brother at a similar age to my surviving daughter, so he was able to empathise more than most people.

During earlier debates on this issue, I note that noble Lords who are speaking today, including the Minister, referred to the many effects of extreme grief, and I do not need to reiterate them now. However, one thing that I would add to this evening’s debate is that a child in distress may learn very adequately to disguise that distress because they want to make the burden less on the surviving parent. That is a danger: if one of the measures is whether the child is in distress, the answer may be apparently no. My noble friend said:

“The point I am trying to make is that it is far better to recognise that individual responses to grief vary. As a number of noble Lords have said, grief often does not manifest in behavioural and emotional challenges until months or even years down the line”.—[Official Report, 27/2/14; col. 744.]

I appreciate his deep understanding of the issue.

This evening, I want to share a few points about the causes of bereavement and what effect they can have on the grieving process. Those come not as a direct result of my personal experience but because I was, as a result, asked to become patron of the Compassionate Friends, which is an international bereavement support network. Through that organisation, I have learnt of the many and varied circumstances in which parents can find themselves. The death could be suicide, accident, murder or illness. It can be sudden, shocking and numbing or it can be lengthy and drawn out, so that by the actual death the survivors are already exhausted.

This is particularly pertinent to this evening’s discussion because in the case of suicide or murder there would of course have to be an inquest, which might well not begin for over six months. I am glad to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, is in her place, because she and I debated the issue of timeliness at length during the passage of the Coroners Act. This has improved, but the inquest could still not take place for several months, and might then continue for several weeks. This is likely to be at a time which is at least as stressful as the actual death and often more so, given the forensic examination of details. In the case of a death resulting from a crime there would be a court case. Again, this may continue for some time and be very stressful. In those cases it would be impossible to apply the formula which my noble friend raised this evening, because periods of one month every so often would not cover those sorts of scenarios.

I will briefly make a point that has been raised by the organisation I mentioned, the Compassionate Friends. Of course family and friends generally rally round at first to help. However, as time passes they might not be able to continue that support, or they may feel that it is time someone got over it, and so the situation may become more stressful after six months.

Returning to work is often welcome, because a return to any sort of normality is helpful. I must say that in my own case, while I would not say that returning to the House of Lords was life-saving, it brought me back to a state of normality. Even when someone is back at work, there will of course be the dreaded Christmas or other festive occasions such as birthdays, and there will be anniversaries of the death. In addition, for the child or children there will be things that trigger an enormous need for extra support from their surviving parent—for example, very predictable things such as exams or parents’ evenings. Holidays can be very stressful. There might be things that are not even foreseen. A teenage child might suffer from the break-up of their first or second relationship, which would also trigger all sorts of unforeseen issues.

As the Compassionate Friends say, individuals grieve differently and there is no timetable for grief. I hope that, within the constraints of needing some guidance, the discretion given to the easement months can be considerably more flexible. I am very grateful to my noble friend for raising this issue.