Nearly 44,000 children in Alabama have either lost a parent or become orphaned as of 2020, making it the state with the fourth highest rate of childhood bereavement according to a new report.
The report, conducted by Evermore, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on securing bereavement care for families, along with Pennsylvania State University and the University of Southern California, found that about 6% of children under 18 in Alabama have lost a parent in their lifetime.
The report counts children who lost parents to all causes of death, including COVID, through 2020.
The pandemic, coupled with additional factors including overdoses, suicide and maternal mortality, led to a 20-year-high of childhood bereavement in 2021. The rates of children losing a parent rose in every state and across every racial and ethnic group in the last two years.
More than 6,000 children in the state lost a parent in 2020 alone.
In Alabama, over 6% of indigenous children – the group with the highest rates of bereavement nationwide and in the state – lost a parent, followed by 4.5% of white children and 3.6% of Black children.
According to the report, “parentally bereaved children are at heightened risk of academic failure, mental illness, substance abuse, violent crime, self-harm, suicide attempts, suicide and premature death from all causes.”
“The death of a parent becomes an initiating event, leaving children vulnerable to these and many other risks that can alter the trajectory of their lives,” the report stated. “An orphaned child’s potential for lifelong success, well-being, and prosperity depends on the support he or she receives soon after bereavement. This is a crisis hiding in plain sight.”
Researchers recommended a national approach to addressing “the growing childhood bereavement crisis in the United States” by providing families with access to healthcare, ensuring all bereaved children receive Social Security benefits they’re entitled to, developing more community based programs and investing in more data collection and research.
Congress and the Biden administration are currently considering a national strategy to help children who have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19, according to the report, but the organization hopes they will expand that plan to include children who have lost a parent regardless of cause.
“An orphaned child’s potential for lifelong success, well-being and prosperity depends on the support he or she receives soon after bereavement,” said Joyal Mulheron, Founder and Executive Director of Evermore. “We are hopeful that lawmakers will reconsider a singular national orphan strategy by tending to all parentally bereaved children.”
Alabama currently has bereavement support centers like Amelia Center at Children’s Hospital of Alabama, which provides grief counseling to children and families and The Healing Place in Muscle Shoals.
