Practical Tools and Activities for Supporting System Involved Youth and Families After Loss and Death

Shoshana Phoenixx

Training Description

System involved youth, their families and caretakers experience so many losses, frequently in a short time period of time. To best support system involved youth, it is important that parents, caregivers and helping professionals understand emotional reactions to loss, death and grief and how to support youth in their grieving process. In this course, participants will learn about emotional responses to loss and grief through a developmental lens, as well as different tools and strategies to help system involved youth and others in their lives process losses and grief. This class is ideal for caregivers, parents and professionals. This class will involve self-reflection, somatic exercises to calm the nervous system and expressive arts activities. Participants should plan to be present and have their camera on for the entirety of the class.

Learning Objectives

· Identify how system involved youth at different developmental stages engage in the grief process

· Use at least two creative and artistic activities to help children process and articulate their feelings of grief

· Develop at least three strategies for identifying and accommodating the unique needs and contexts of grief with system involved youth

· Identify and leverage their own personal strengths and grounding to enhance their grief support work with system involved youth and families

Agenda 

9:30-9:55am  Introductions & Logistics

9:55-10:30am  Defining Grief and Loss

10:30-11:30am  Understanding the Developmental Capacity in Grieving

11:30-11:45am  BREAK (CEUs will not be offered for this time)

11:45am-12:30pm  Addressing Grief and Loss 

12:30-1:00pm  LUNCH (CEUs will not be offered for this time)

1:00-2:00pm  Addressing Dysregulation

2:00-3:00pm  Activities for Processing Grief and Loss

3:00-3:15pm  BREAK (CEUs will not be offered for this time)

3:15-4:15pm  Discussions about more Activities for Processing Grief and Loss/Questions and Answers

4:15-4:30pm  Evaluations and Adjourn

Meet Our Trainer

Shoshana has been working with communities and professional caregivers educating and training on the issues and challenges around progressive illness, trauma, death and bereavement for families for over 40 years. In that work she has supported people in many ways and forms as they experience illness, grief, healing, recovery, and transformation. She began her grief and loss professional journey during the illness and death of both of her parents when she was a teenager. She subsequently served a residency in Berkeley to become an interfaith chaplain and now describes herself as “a Jewish chaplain, who works from an interfaith perspective”.  She has trained, counselled, and supported adults and children dealing with terminal illnesses, (and students/volunteers wanting to learn) using art modalities and non-traditional approaches. Shoshana developed her skills in ASL after meeting a deaf friend 30 years ago. She herself became late-deafened at the age of 40 and has identified as being a part of the Deaf community ever since.  The thread that stitches together all the pieces of her work life is care, compassion and comfort for suffering people who find themselves outside the system of norms in American mainstream culture.  As a person who has lived outside those norms all her life, Mama Shoshana says with conviction, “We have our unconventional ways, and I am here to tell you that they are valid. There are many roads up this mountain called life, and we survive the unimaginable by stitching together all that we learn from one another.”  Shoshana  is also the author of The Phoenixx Haggadah and has developed a range of learning interventions and activities including:

★ Developing an ethical will

★ Developing a "spiritual toolbox" for journeying through life's deepest challenges,

★ Bereavement training programs for social workers, care aides, case managers and paraprofessionals

★ Grief support programs for groups and teams

★ Needs assessment tool for anticipatory grief and loss in clients and families

★ Art-therapy based grief support for children

This course meets the qualifications for (6) BBS CEUs for LCSWs, LMFTs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.