Dealing with loss and grief are some of life’s hardest moments, especially for children. Bailey Brewer, an MPH student at Brown, is also intimately familiar with this experience. For three years, Brewer volunteered with a pediatric bereavement program in her home state of South Carolina, working with children experiencing the death of a parent, grandparent, sibling or friend.
When she moved to Rhode Island to pursue a master’s degree at Brown’s School of Public Health, she realized her passion had evolved into a specific interest in maternal and child health. Last spring, while preparing for her community-engaged MPH Practicum, Brewer sought a project that would advance maternal and child health here in Rhode Island.
That’s when Sarah Bouchard, director of the School of Public Health’s Office of Community Engagement, connected her with Susan Orban at the Washington County Coalition for Children, a local nonprofit advocating for the health and well-being of children and families. Brewer called this match “a perfect fit.”
She then spent this summer working on the Coalition’s Greatest 8™ initiative, which teaches children “eight skills for a lifetime of mental wellness” while delivering tips and activities parents can use to nurture their child’s healthy emotions and behavior.
By the end of August, Brewer completed a multi-pronged project that involved curating book lists for Ocean State Libraries, creating resource guides and a social-media suite to promote social-emotional literacy, and partnerships with PBS Kids, Sesame Workshop and Disney Junior.
She also developed a specialized book list of 30 titles and four resource guides addressing death, divorce and relocation – building on her earlier work in pediatric bereavement.
Before Brewer’s practicum project, the Coalition had no centralized, skill-aligned reading guide for early childhood grief support or social-emotional development. By creating these resources, she provided parents, caregivers and library staff ready-to-use tools for selecting developmentally appropriate books that build emotional literacy and resilience.
We spoke with Bailey Brewer about her work at the Washington County Coalition for Children and her insights into working with children experiencing loss.
What was your experience like working at the Washington County Coalition for Children?
Brewer: I came in with the idea of helping them create a Greatest 8™ book list for the next few years. They had a large document with several books already evaluated, and my job was to organize it and add some new books. A team of child psychologists and other child health professionals evaluated more than 300 books, which led us to ultimately select 30 titles, carefully chosen for ages three to five.
I also helped create launch pads for upcoming book lists for the zero-to-two and six-to-eight age groups, and I worked on a social media suite for their team that promoted some of these books, materials and social-emotional literacy more holistically.
This often looked like promoting partnerships or stakeholder opportunities. For example, the Washington County Coalition for Children partners with PBS, so we often recommend Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, a continuation of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, as well as things from Sesame Workshop or Sesame Street, and Disney Junior’s Bluey. We found episodes and other media, as well as books, that could promote social-emotional literacy in childhood for children ages zero through eight.
How did your experience working with pediatric bereavement shape your practicum?
During my undergraduate years, I volunteered with a pediatric bereavement group in South Carolina. It was truly a wonderful experience. I did it for three years, and we would go out to these overnight camps and work with children who had lost a loved one, whether it was a sibling, parent, grandparent or sometimes a pet. They were grieving nonetheless, and we all came together.
I think it was a beautiful experience, and it impacted the children so greatly that when I came up to Rhode Island, my first thought was, “Okay, I need to find an equivalent nonprofit where I can do the same thing.” So I immediately volunteered with Friends Way, whose amazing work in pediatric bereavement greatly influenced my practicum. When I was talking to Susan Orban of the Coalition about that, she said, “Well, why don’t we create a grief and loss resource guide?” And I loved the idea, so I jumped on it.
That became the third deliverable, and it created an entirely separate book list of 30-plus books geared toward children ages zero through eight that specifically discuss loss or grief. Some of them also touch on other difficult experiences. We titled it “Life’s Hardest Moments,” and it includes topics like divorce and parental separation, as well as displacement or relocation—having a kid move from one house to another—and the emotions that come along with that, especially at an early age.
I created a book list around that, and I also created four resource guides. One will be distributed to Ocean State Libraries in Rhode Island to use for librarian-led story times. Some focus on younger kids and social-emotional literacy skills.
For the older kids, in the six-to-eight age group, we created a specialized story time around grief and loss. We wanted to make sure that, because story times and libraries can often serve as community hubs, grieving families had a place to come where they could be with people who had similar experiences, share that camaraderie and move through the different emotions of grief together.
It’s truly been a wonderful experience, and I had a lot of fun creating those activity guides. They would have a story time book paired with them, and then I would create age-appropriate activities.
For example, one activity was writing a letter to a loved one who had passed away. Essentially, the libraries or WCCC would purchase water-soluble paper, which you can get at a a craft store. You give the paper to the kids and let them either draw or write a letter to their loved one who passed away.
At the end of the activity, you can take it out to a safe body of water, whether it’s the ocean, a stream or a lake, and use it as a kind of letting-go ritual. You release the letter into the water and watch it dissolve.
I did this with my kids back in South Carolina, too, and it doesn’t just float away. It really does dissolve in front of you and becomes one with the ocean; meanwhile, it’s environmentally friendly.
I think that’s a great example of one of the activities in the guide. It’s a letting-go ritual that gives children a tangible object they can create for the loved one they lost, then release it and, in a way, give it to their loved one who passed away.
What are your postgraduate plans?
I certainly want to stay in the field of maternal and child health. Now that I've wrapped up my practicum with Washington County, I've received a graduate internship at Rhode Island Kids Count. After that, I hope to continue child health policy work, whether at the state level or more broadly at the national level.
Are you planning on staying in Rhode Island?
Yes, I love Rhode Island!