Grieving Styles: Identifying and Supporting the Unique Ways System-Involved Youth Process and Adapt to Loss

Wendy Kessler, MSW, FT

Training Description

Grief is a paradoxical experience. Among the numerous contradictions is the reality that grief is simultaneously universal and unique. System-involved youth experience significant loss throughout their lifetime, but how each youth feels, processes, expresses, and is comforted in grief varies tremendously. This training will explain four primary grieving styles, highlight how youth’s grief needs change across developmental stages, and offer strategies to support each unique grieving style. Training participants will also have an opportunity to understand their unique grieving style, helping them recognize biases that influence how they support system-involved youth. Participants will be informed through presenter instruction, case study assessment, a learning activity, self-reflection, guided discussion, and Q&A.

Learning Objectives

• Identify the four primary grieving styles and explain how each style can be assessed in system-involved youth.

• Acquire knowledge of changing grief expression and needs through five stages of a youth’s development by…