Specialty Workshops

Wednesday, April 7
Full Day Workshops – 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Morning Workshops – 8:30 a.m. - Noon
Afternoon Workshops – 1:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Full Day Workshops

Promises & Pitfalls in Evaluation of Bereavement Programs
Sandler, Irwin, PhD;  Ayers, Tim, PhD;  McClintic, Brook, PhD

Two trends are leading bereavement agencies to be interested in program evaluation: their own need to ensure that they are helping bereaved families, and funders’ increasing emphasis on evidence-based services. This workshop will review several important aspects of evaluations that can be done by bereavement agencies including: specifying what outcomes are expected and why and for whom; measuring these outcomes using reliable and valid measures; measuring program implementation; and simple and practical approaches to data analysis and use of evaluation for program improvement.

Objectives:

  1. Understand different types of program evaluations that might be conducted within bereavement support agencies and the purpose and benefits of each.
  2. Know the criteria that need to be considered in selecting valid and reliable assessment materials.
  3. Consider pragmatic and ethical issues that should be addressed when designing evaluations of programs within agencies.


Cross-cultural Interventions for Grief and Trauma
Sugarman, Lois, PhD
Personal Therapeutic Resources, Wake Forest, NC, US

Thought Field Therapy (TFT) has been called the "Power Therapy for the 21st Century." Lecture, demonstration and reports of research substantiating this description will be shared. Attendees will learn how to immediately employ the power and efficiency of the basic level of TFT to help themselves or others. This is possible because TFT either helps in a given instance or does nothing. Either as the primary modality of practice or as a tool compatible with other psychotherapeutic approaches, TFT provides the practitioner access to an approach that helps satisfy demands for brief, effective therapy with measured treatment results.

Objectives:

  1. Consider an energetic and informational approach to interven­ing in grief and trauma
  2. Identify five reasons why Thought Field Therapy is desirable or effective, or both, in assisting persons in grief and trauma
  3. Experience the power of this approach in helping yourself and at least one other person before completion of this workshop


The Long-Term Impact of Loss in Worldview and Identity
Berger, Susan A EdD, LICWS

This workshop presents research findings on how death transforms survivors. The stories of approximately 60 bereaved individuals combined to explain how worldview — defined by a sense of mortality, time, priorities and place — was altered by loss. As a result, survivors developed a "post-loss identity" that helped them find meaning, maintain connection with their deceased and find new purpose in life. These five identities were named: Nomads, Memorialists, Normalizers, Activists and Seekers. Participants will learn how this research contributes to current bereavement theory by focusing on the long-term impact of loss.

Objectives:

  1. Discuss the factors that influence survivor worldview and how an altered worldview shapes the long-term identity of survivors.
  2. Describe the five ways survivors grieve, the main features of each identity, and how four of these help survivors reflect the meaning of their loss, maintain continuing connection to their lost loved one, and find the identity that gives them new purpose in life.
  3. Examine their own worldview, and apply the model to a story of a grieving person.


Morning Workshops

Trauma Grief and Chronic Sorrow: An Emerging Connection
Lord, Janice Harris, MSSW, LCSW/ACSW, LPC; Roos, Susan, PhD, LCSW/ACSW, BC

Two clinicians, exploring similar symptoms of trauma grief and chronic sorrow for years together, intimately experienced the connection when one had a traumatic, life-endangering stroke, throwing both into existential chronic sorrow. Trauma grief, often perceived as re-enacted terror and helplessness following a sudden, often-violent death, differs from chronic sorrow, which usually begins with a traumatic event, but the person does not die, living on in a diminished state. This seminar explores each construct and proposes strategies to enhance treatment effectiveness when both are involved.

Objectives:

  1. Define current understandings of trauma grief and chronic sorrow.
  2. Describe common and differing symptoms of each construct.
  3. Discuss proposed strategies for effective intervention when both are present.


Dealing with Death: Communication and Body Language Workshop
Halamish, Lynne, MA

We will examine the effect of body language specifically in com­munication with the dying person and his or her family. Due to fears and discomfort that we feel with dying persons, we frequently avoid eye contact. This, along with many other unconscious affective communication signals, has the effect of forcing the dying person to go through a social death prior to the physical death. Teaching methods: demonstrations and practice of body language including empathetic affective communication, giving the stage, identifying personal fears, fielding tough questions, eye contact, body position, posture, goodbye letter to a deceased loved one, guided imagery.

Objectives:

  1. Interpret non-verbal signals that the dying patient is sending.
  2. Identify personal fears and neutralize their interference in communication
  3. Respond appropriately to non-verbal signals.


From Toddlers to Teens: Helping Children Tell Their Stories
Norton, Marsha, PhD; Reed, Tiffany, MHS

With proper guidance, children can learn to construct stories which will provide an important reference point as they transition from one developmental stage to the next — each time adding new meaning to their life-changing experience. In this workshop, we will explore varied ways to help children of all ages tell the story of their loss. We will present activities ranging from play therapy with preschoolers to music and art therapies with teens. The interven­tions presented will help participants facilitate the expression and integration of children’s feelings and experiences.

Objectives:

  1. Participants will be able to recognize the developmental language level of a child for the purpose of choosing an appropriate intervention.
  2. Participants will be able to employ a wide range of activities for use with children and adolescents in order to promote storytelling.
Participants will be able to describe how storytelling, a) facilitates the grief process by recording the experiences of a child and accurate facts surrounding the death, b) enhances social interaction by creating an opportunity for sharing and validation, c) provides a medium for continued growth in processing the loss over time and continuing bonds with the deceased loved one.


Afternoon Workshops

Let Your Star Shine: Life Story Work and Life Review
Renzenbrink, Irene, MSoc Admin

 "Let your star shine." These are the words of well-known Irish writer, Maeve Binchy, in an introduction to Lifestory, a guide produced by the Irish Hospice Foundation. We can star in our own stories! This workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to develop awareness and skill in helping themselves and others to share and record stories about their life. Out of Africa author Karen Blixen once wrote that "all sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them." We make sense of our experiences of loss and change through the creation of stories. We all carry within ourselves a huge store of untold stories, some of them painful and others joyful. In "giving sorrow words," we begin to heal "wounds of feeling" (Holman) and grow stronger, more insightful and effective in helping others.

Objectives:

  1. Apply the basic principles of the biographical and narrative approach in loss and bereavement care using knowledge and techniques developed in life review and life story work.
  2. Demonstrate ability in "writing as an aid to remembering" through a "Transformational Reminiscence "life matrix" exercise developed by John Kunz to achieve "coherence and wholeness."
  3. Distinguish between terms such as reminiscence, narrative, story, guided autobiography and autoethnography.


Innovative Interventions for Expressive Grief Release
Burnett, Laurel, MA, Counseling, LMHC; Lowe, Pam, MS

Let’s meet at the crossroads of theory, imagination and creativity! Participants will learn expressive grief release techniques and will be empowered with ideas, "how-tos" and "hands-on" therapeutic activities. We’ll integrate grief theory throughout an interactive workshop using case studies from cross cultural and life-span perspectives. Clinicians will be encouraged to integrate expressive grief release and rituals with clients to enhance meaning making after death. Through grief theory, narrative story, craft (rituals), puppets, collage, poetry and music, you will be able to exclaim, "Wow! Who knew I could be so creative?"

Objectives:

  1. Identify the development of grief theory as it relates to the social, cultural and life-span need for meaning making during bereavement and demonstrate creative ways to apply expres­sive grief release to diverse clients (related to culture, age across the life-span, gender and disenfranchised populations).
  2. Practice hands-on activities (Soul Collage, "Grief Stew: What Simmers in Your Loss Pot?," Puppetry, Mandala creation, Poetry, "Music Mosaic") that provide creative and expressive grief release, identify techniques for specific populations (for ex. children, seniors, elderly, disabled, veterans, disenfranchised populations), and apply these techniques to the clients you work with.
  3. Integrate grief theory with the practical hands-on and learned-skills application of expressive art using six modalities and formulate a plan for using ritual, ceremony and grief release with your clients.


Hope, a Dynamic Process in Life and Death
Fanslow-Brunjes, Cathleen, MA, CNS, RN

Hope comes to the fore when facing the greatest challenge in our life, our own death. "The Hope System: The Four Stages of Hope" is an innovative and effective approach to the care of the dying person and their loved ones. The Four Stages of Hope describe how the nature of hope changes in the person with a terminal diagnosis and their loved ones through death. The principles and the basic needs of the dying will be presented as they relate to the Hope System and the dying person. Patient stories will be utilized to make the Hope System come alive for the participants.

Objectives:

  1. Identify the Four Stages of the Hope System.
  2. Recognize the differences in the Hope System for the family and patient and how this affects the dying process.
Identify the changes in the Hope System as the patient nears death so that you may intervene more effectively with the patient and loved ones.