When Grief Gets More Complicated: Supporting harder-to-serve populations of children and youth

 Mental Health Education and Training for Professionals

When Grief Gets More Complicated: Supporting harder-to-serve populations
Date: May 9, 2019
Facilitators: Andrea Warnick, RN., MA., Liana Lowenstein, MSW., RSW., CPT-S., and Esther Rhee, MSW.
This training is suitable for: Front-line workers and volunteers, medical professionals, educators, clergy, social workers, administrators, residential workers, counsellors, funeral service providers and hospice volunteers.

This workshop will explore the concept that when awareness is balanced between self and other, compassion has a dual pathway, where our care extends both to ourselves and to those in our care. In addition to the use of compassion in clinical work, mindfulness practices that can be used with children, adolescents, and families will be explored, along with the clinician's own mindful practice. Participants will gain essential skills and strategies to develop mindfulness practices that can be incorporated into clinical work with those who are grieving a death.

Overview: This workshop will focus on how to support some of the harder-to-serve populations of grieving children and youth including youth those with learning disabilities, those with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as those who have experienced a death through suicide. The concept of “Complicated Grief” will be touched on, and ways of identifying when a child may be experiencing Childhood Traumatic Grief (CTG) will be highlighted. Please note that while this workshop will be trauma-informed, the emphasis will be on recognizing, not treating, children and youth who are experiencing CTG. 

Clinical examples, practical tools and resources will be shared through small and large group discussion with the aim of enhancing participant’s confidence in their ability to provide grief support in clinically challenging situations.

Participants will learn:

• Support strategies and resources for some of the harder-to-serve populations of grieving children and youth such as those with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, Learning Disability, and/or grief related to suicide.
• Ways of identifying Childhood Traumatic Grief (CTG).
• Literary, web, and local community supports available to support these populations of grieving children and youth.

This is Learning Module 4 of the 2019 Certificate Program in Children's Grief and Bereavement. This module may be taken separately from the certificate program as a stand-alone workshop.