Understanding How Attachment Styles Influence Processing Loss for System Involved Youth & Caregivers

Wendy Kessler, MSW, FT

Training Description

This training offers evidence-based insights that increase the efficacy of support offered to system-involved youth and caregivers navigating significant loss. The training will include instruction on overlapping Attachment Theory and Grief Processing Models to help system-involved youth and caregivers adapt to change and grow through loss. Participants will be informed through presenter instruction, a slide presentation, guided discussion, small group sharing, reviewing case studies, and learning strategies to add to your supportive tool kit.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

● Identify 4 attachment styles and explain how they affect processing, adapting, and growing through loss.

● Identify 2 grief models that help us guide system-involved youth and caregivers through their unique experience of processing loss.

● Acquire 4 Strategies for helping system-involved youth and caregivers adapt to loss based on their attachment style.

Agenda

12:00 – 12:15pm  Welcome & Introductions

12:15 – 1:15pm  Attachment Styles & Grief

● All Loss (death, nondeath, ambiguous, and traumatic loss) is Processed as Grief

● Grief Models that Help Us Guide Others Through Loss - Dual Process Model of Coping & Four Tasks of Grieving

● 3 Attachment Styles - Secure, Anxious, Avoidant

● Disorganized Attachment and Trauma

● Attachment Style & Grief

1:15 – 1:30pm  Breakout Rooms

● Small Group Discussion in groups of two: “How does understanding the overlap of Attachment Styles and how we adapt to loss apply to your role supporting System Involved Youth and Caregivers?”

1:30 - 1:45pm  Return to Main Room

● Open sharing of applications with entire group

1:45 - 2:15pm  Lunch Break (CE hours will not be offered for this time)

2:15 – 2:45pm  Exploring Case Studies

● Identify Attachment Style

● Grief Support Needs

2:45 – 3:45pm  Strategies

● Secure Attachment & Loss

● Anxious Attachment & Loss

● Avoidant Attachment & Loss

● Disorganized Attachment & Loss

3:45 - 4:00pm  Discussion Questions

4:00 – 4:15pm  Wrap-up

Meet Our Trainer

Wendy Kessler, MSW, FT is a Grief Specialist. She is credentialed as a Fellow in Thanatology (the study of death, dying, and bereavement) by the Association of Death Education and Counseling, and a Certified Mental Health First Aid Instructor. Wendy worked as hospice Bereavement Specialist from 2017-2022 – offering grief care to patients’ loved ones, hospice staff, and community partners. Through hospice work she recognized a gap in grief education for helping professionals, and a need for better understanding and support for grievers. As a result, she left corporate hospice care and launched Grief Guide Consulting, LLC in 2022. Her private practice grief services include individual counseling, support group facilitation, group education, and consulting. She believes that grief is not a problem to be fixed. It is a journey that we can learn to navigate, and when the path is unfamiliar or uncertain it can help to have a guide. You can learn more about Wendy or contact her at her website: www.griefguideconsulting.com.

This course meets the qualifications for (3.75) BBS CE hours 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.