Join award-winning author and international speaker Liana Lowenstein, as she equips you with the knowledge and tools needed to work effectively with grieving children, teens, and families.
You will learn up-to-date grief theory, an innovative model for assessing bereaved children, and a variety of creative techniques to address typical and traumatic grief. Discover engaging interventions to help children bereaved by suicide, homicide, mass violence, military casualties, natural disasters, traumatic separation, and other types of loss.
Watch the creative interventions come to life through demonstrations and actual client sessions. A must-see session!
Objectives
Outline
Up-To-Date Grief Theory and Foundational Knowledge
Target Audience
The devastation and profound grief of Black children and families impacted by gun violence can be unrelenting.
These preventable deaths feel senseless, invoking sadness and anger, leaving clients with unanswered questions and horrifying images of the pain and suffering faced by their cared about persons who often die alone.
Join Dr. Tashel Bordere, PhD, certified Thanatologist in death, dying, and bereavement and learn:
Objectives
Outline
Social Justice Theories and Concepts
Homicide Rates and Patterns of Trauma, Loss, and Grief among Black Children and Adolescents
Common Grief Reactions to Traumatic Loss within Cultural Context
Factors that Complicate Grief for Youth and Families Bereaved by Homicide
Homicide Loss in Relation to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Suffocated Grief and Bereaved Black Youth
Limitations in research and practice
Culturally conscientious, grief-informed practices in research, clinical work, and programming with youth and families coping with deaths by homicide (5 A’s, rituals, continuing bonds).
Target Audience
The death of a significant person represents one of the most powerful disruptions in all aspects of a child’s emotional existence.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of myths and misconceptions around how to best provide support to a grieving child. When the loss is substance related challenging elements such as guilt, shame, confusion, and isolation add further layers of complexity to a child’s grief process. An important element to consider in any child’s grief process is their ability to narrate their understanding of the death to both them and others, which can be particularly challenging when substance use is involved in the death.
Having an awareness of complicating factors associated with substance related deaths is essential for you to provide skilled professional support to these young people. Join Andrea Warnick, grief specialist, as she shows you how to identify these factors and other challenges and barriers, you’ll experience supporting your young clients. Both innovative and practical strategies for supporting healthy grief process in children will be shared including:
Stories and important messages from children, youth, and their families that illustrate “best practice” guidelines will be woven throughout.
Objectives
Outline
Common barriers
Grief Literacy
Talking with Children about a Death from Substance Use
5 Common Concerns of Grieving Children
Practical Support Strategies
Signs that Children May Need Additional Support
Useful Resources
Target Audience
Too many of our young people have become fearful and grief stricken, after a lifetime of bombardment by media information and images suggesting their planet could become so injured it might die during their natural lifetime.
As clinicians we need to help embolden children, teens, parents, and caring adults to join in acting for the health and wellbeing of everyone on Earth. It lays a foundation for understanding the grief and loss our youth feel for themselves, the planet, and every person, creature, and plant that exists.
In this session, Linda Goldman, author of Climate Change and Youth, and active member of the Climate Psychology Alliance, will show you how to create a foundation of understanding that our youth are grieving losses related to climate change. It lays a foundation for terminology, accurate understandings, activities for action on the planet, state of the art projects within the schools, global environmental youth communities, and older generation environmental involvement as well.
As Mr. Fred Rogers stated, “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable” (Rogers, 2019, p. 15). Let us help our young people feel understood, safe, and protected in their environment.
Objectives
Apply vocabulary related to youth grief and climate change put to practical use in-session.
Utilize practical tools to promote engagement with children and older youth about climate change and the grief surrounding it.
Assess resources available to young people (books and non-profits) in relation to assessment and treatment planning.
Outline
Grief and loss issues in today’s world focusing on climate change
Promote Dialogue with youth about climate change
Case Studies and techniques to use with young people about climate change
Current research on the impact of climate change on young people.
Target Audience
While grief is most often associated with death, children and adolescents experience grief from a variety of non-death losses as well.
And our young clients have experienced unprecedented and cumulative losses over the past three years. Some of these include parental divorce, school changes, trauma, personal breakups, abuse or neglect, foster care or adoption, physical and mental illness, parental substance use, and more.
Join Dr. Eric Sirrine, expert in death, dying and bereavement in this session on moving beyond a traditional “staged” or linear model of grief to help you understand and address the complexities of non-death losses. You’ll be empowered to engage in grief-informed practice to help your young clients integrate losses into their ongoing lives in adaptive ways. 
Objectives
Outline
Non-Death Losses Impacting Children and Adolescents
Examine the Pandemic’s Impact on Childhood Grief and the Clients you Serve
Common Emotional, Social, Physical, and Spiritual Reactions to Non-Death Loss
Moving Beyond a Staged or Linear Model of Grief Counseling to Support your Grieving Clients
Target Audience