Training at KC To The Point
Involving children in dying, farewell and funerals can be learned. Not in an afternoon, and not from a book alone.
Where you apply it differs — a funeral home is not a classroom. But the basic attitude underneath is the same in every context. That is why everyone starts with the same core line, and only then does it become specific to your work.
Each step is complete in itself. After the online course you can get started tomorrow. The next step is for those who notice that knowing is not the same as being able — at the moment a mother sits across from you who would rather keep her eight-year-old at home.
Who it is for
Funerals
You advise parents in the week in which they can see the least ahead, and you notice that the children stay out of the picture.
Education
Sooner or later there will be a child in your class who has to deal with death. And then everyone looks at you.
Youth care and social services
You see families get stuck without anyone having died, and you have no language for what is being lost.
All three start from the same core line. After that it becomes specific: application in your context.
And: are you coming alone, or with your team? You take online training individually. We prefer to give the live trainings in-company, at your own location — colleagues who hear each other’s doubts learn more than sixteen strangers in a room.
Core line: involving children in grief, funerals and loss
Children have a right to say goodbye. Yet they are often kept out — rarely out of unwillingness, mostly out of not knowing. Parents do not know how to involve their child. Professionals do not dare to advise for fear of making the wrong choice. The consequences only show years later, in adults who missed a farewell that cannot be done over.
This line teaches you what is possible. The training programme runs in four steps, from the online course to ongoing guidance.
Level 1 — Online
The method at your own pace: how to quickly assess the impact of a loss on a family, how to dose information at a child’s developmental level, which ways of involving children exist before, during and after the funeral, and the five ways in which you unintentionally exclude a child.
You work with the Loss Triangle, the three-step plan for honest communication and a checklist you can use in every conversation with parents.
€89 · unlimited access · certificate on completion · can start immediately
This gets you started. If you also want to practise it — explaining to a child, preparing a child to say goodbye at the body — then level 2 is the next step.
Level 2 — Training day
One day of six hours, excluding breaks. Not a presentation about the method, but practising with it: case material from your own practice, role play in pairs and group discussion about what you encounter when you truly involve a child. The child who asks what happens inside the coffin. The child who wants to see the body.
What you practise
- Explanation at a child’s level: what death is, what happens to the body, what a funeral or cremation is
- Preparing a child to see the body, and guiding the moment itself
All participants get access to the online course beforehand, so that the day itself can go entirely to practice.
In-company
Up to 12 participants, at your own location. Including travel costs within the Netherlands and the online course for every participant. For larger teams we make a separate arrangement.
Open registration — €250 per person, incl. VAT and lunch
For those who want to come alone because their organisation is not there yet. A minimum of 6 and a maximum of 16 participants; with fewer than six the case work does not function and the day will not go ahead. You will hear no later than three weeks beforehand whether the training goes ahead — if not, you get your registration fee back or move to the next date.
Next date: Friday 19 February 2027, Castricum
Level 3 — Advanced programme
Three days, for those who have mastered the basics and run into complexity. The child who grieves harder for his guinea pig than for his father. The mother who wants to keep her child away. The situation in which your advice clashes with what the parent wants.
What we cover
- The first conversation with parents: assessing what is going on and raising the child without pushing
- Advising when parents hesitate or refuse, and accepting where your advice ends
- Your own formulations, with feedback: what works, what unintentionally excludes
Price and dates on request.
Level 4 — Annual programme
Ongoing guidance for professionals who have embedded children’s grief structurally in their work: peer consultation, updating and room to bring in your own cases throughout the year. With a teaching day on unnatural death: accidents, violent crimes, suicide and euthanasia.
On request.
Application in your context
The core line gives you the way of working. What that way of working concretely means differs per field. These trainings build on it.
Funerals — Arranging children’s funerals
The deceased child is a different craft from the grieving child. Parents who cannot make choices because no choice exists that feels right. Siblings nobody dares to speak to. And the professional’s own discomfort, which you cannot train away but can learn to carry.
Online — €89 · self-paced · certificate on completion
Live — in-company on request, for teams who arrange these funerals regularly and hardly speak about it among themselves.
Education — Grief in the classroom
A child who loses a parent returns to a class of thirty. What do you say to the group, what do you do with the empty chair, how do you deal with a child who seems to feel nothing for weeks and then collapses in March? And what do you, as a teacher, do with your own hesitation to bring it up?
Workshop for teams in primary and secondary education: teachers, special-needs coordinators and pastoral leads. With the protocol for the death of a pupil or parent, and room for case material from your own school.
Live — in-company on request, as a team meeting or part of a study day.
Youth care and social services — Living loss and domestic violence
Living loss is grief without a death: the loss of how something should have been, while life simply goes on. The child with a severe disability. The parent who is still there, but no longer the same. No funeral, no condolences, no recognition — and yet a great loss, which builds up until the tension erupts somewhere.
Living loss does not cause domestic violence. But it is one of the most underestimated contexts in which violence arises or escalates. Anyone who only looks for signs of violence sees half of it.
Online — €19 · short module of about an hour, with reflection questions. A low threshold to see whether this way of thinking is something for your team.
Live — in-company workshop on request, with the full line from living loss to recognising the signs.
Funeral toys: the instrument
Not a level and not a context, but a tool that returns in all lines.
Children under ten think concretely. Words like cremation and ashes mean nothing without an image — that is not unwillingness or a developmental delay, but how their understanding works. With building toys you show what is going to happen, instead of explaining it.
Online — €89 · eight videos totalling about an hour · four downloadable protocols · available in Dutch, German and English
Live — practical training · with the sets in your hands, your own explanation practised and feedback on it. The difference between knowing how it works and being able to do it while a child is looking at you.
The sets are available separately at shop.kc-tothepoint.com.
Starter package: all online training
The core line, the applications for funerals and social services, and the instrument. Four online trainings, one access.
Involving children in grief, funerals and loss · Arranging children’s funerals · Living loss · Funeral toys in practice
€225 instead of €286 separately.
For anyone whose work with children, young people and families involves dying, funerals and loss, and who does not want to build from separate modules what in practice is one coherent whole.
Get to know us first
Case session — free of charge, 45 minutes, online
Every month a small number of sessions for teams in funerals, palliative care, hospice care and education. We bring one anonymised case from your sector and work through it together. That way you see how we work before you book anything.
Talk: We have to stop comforting
On the comforting strategies that are used with the best of intentions and that harm children rather than help them. For conferences, study days and team meetings.
In-company or tailor-made?
All live trainings can also be given tailor-made, tuned to your sector and case material.