Bereavement Older Adults

Running Head: Bereavement Support for Older Adults

Six Session Group: Bereavement Support for Older Adults

Bereavement Support for Older Adults

Purpose: To create a safe environment for people to express his or her feelings of grief which will hopefully enable them to reconcile his or her loss and begin to reinvest in life by learning through educational support, coping tools in the absence of a loved one

Group Goals/Objectives:
To foster self-awareness, healing, new friends, sense of community, support of others, education about grief and learning coping skills through psycho-educational approach. Our goal is to not stop the pain or forget about the loved one but to help members live with the loved memory in a way that doesn’t
Evaluation/Conclusion
Bereavement Support for Older Adults
Agency:
Golden Grief Counseling agency is a bereavement agency that offers services on general grief and loss support group several times throughout the year at various locations in Central Florida. The group typically meets one day a week for about six consecutive weeks. This is a free group, but registration and prescreening evaluation is required to determine the appropriateness of participants to try and obtain group cohesion. All groups will be based on Homogeneity
To be eligible to participate potential members must be at least 69 years of age; 3 or 4 months or more after the loss of a loved one(however, some participants may want to join sooner and Golden Grief Counseling agency will respect a bereaved participant interests in joining the group based on his or her personal grief journey. Golden Grief Counseling agency certainly realizes what works for one person may not be suitable for the next.
1. Group Rationale:
Grief is the emotional reaction to a significant loss, such as the death of a loved one (bereavement) or no longer being independent with activities of daily living. People may use the words “sorrow” and “heartache” to describe feelings of grief(Bonifas,2010) Whether an individual loses a beloved person, an animal, place or object, or a valued way of life, such as a job, marriage or good health, some level of grief will naturally follow
The facilitator defines group rules and instructs members in a warm, appropriate way about roles and skills needed for effective group participation and group cohesion. The facilitator asks every group member to introduce themselves.
Objective of Group Development: 1. Reduces the initial anxiety and misconceptions about joining a group 2. Preaffiliation, members may be guarded at first 3. Provides information and instruction about group to facilitate the member’s ability to provide informed consent. 4. Achieve consensus between group leader and group members on the objectives of the group session
8. Pre-group Activities/Intervention: 1. The preparation session occurs after the group members have had a pre-group written handout that describes what the grief process is and how group works, roles of group leaders and group members, or goals for the group, specific skills to be used in the group, topics and typical activities that the group will be experiencing. 2. The group will view a 5 -10 minute video tape of bereavement groups/educational groups. 3. During the pre-group activities, each group member were asked the question “What they hoped they get from the