When children experience bereavement school staff can play a major role in helping them to come to terms with their loss, as Nancy Walbank explains Caring for the mind and body in schools is a matter for legislation; caring for the spirit is a more tenuous matter. When a student or a member of staff experiences a bereavement, the need to care for their spiritual well-being, their soul, becomes paramount.God can be a focus for anger. I witnessed a primary-school boy, whose father had died of lung cancer, furiously explode at his teacher when she said his father was with Jesus in Heaven. He was angry with his father for choosing to smoke and, as he saw it, choosing to die. Jesus was part of the conspiracy.This emotional response is not confined to children, though their experience of grief