FULL RESEARCH REPORT SUMMARY
The Crossroads of Grief: Reflecting on our work with Marginalized Grieving Youth
In the Fall of 2019, The Children and Youth Grief Network (CYGN) completed the project; The Crossroads of Grief: Understanding Grief & Diversity (funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation). The FULL Summary Document (including recommendations) is below.
The project focused on conducting and sharing research that would enhance the knowledge and skills of the CYGN partners and community stakeholders in relation to working with marginalized grieving children. By engaging in this work, we hope to better inform our resources and services, ensuring that they are sensitive to the needs of marginalized communities. The activities encompassed within the project included:
1) Updating the previously-conducted literature review (available below)
2) Undertaking a new, comprehensive review on marginalized communities and grief, with particular emphasis on Canadian populations
3) Developing and delivering four information sessions for clinicians, healthcare providers, educators, and parents/community members to share findings, inform best practices and determine our next steps.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY REPORT SLIDES
TO READ CROSSROADS OF GRIEF PROJECT
UPDATED LITERATURE REVIEW 2019
Our 2015 Needs Assessment and previous Literature Review identified the death of a family member as a particularly devastating experience for young children, and one that may disrupt developmental pathways. Current research (2018) shows there has been a significant increase in attention being given to how to effectively meet the emotional and practical needs of grieving or bereaved young people but there remains a gap between theory and the coordinated availability of well-informed, evidence-based grief support for children, particularly vulnerable young people.
In the Spring of 2019, The Children and Youth Grief Network (CYGN) released a newly updated Literature Review and Overview Summary on Children and Youth Grief! The Literature Review and Overview are part of the "Crossroads of Grief: Understanding Grief and Diversity Project," which addresses the lack of knowledge and resources related to the complex interplay of grief with other sociological barriers.
OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE REVIEW
COMPLETE LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature search focuses on key articles, reports, etc. published between 2010 and 2015.
The articles in the lit search reflect current thinking on the many different aspects of grief and bereavement among children and youth people.
THE LITERATURE SEARCH
SUPPLEMENT TO LITERATURE SEARCH
The supplement to literature search discusses helplines, chat lines, social media, on-line support, etc. that is available to children and youth when seeking out support with grief and bereavement.
POPULATION AND SCHOOL DATA
The Children and Youth Grief Network strives to search for and use current data to better inform the understanding of the children, youth and families being supported and served, including estimates of how many grieving children there are. Using data from 2016 Statistics Canada (Census of Canada and Mortality Data), estimates for the numbers of grieving children were estimated in Canada, Ontario, Halton, Peel and Toronto.
FAMILY EDUCATION CENTRE SURVEY
CYGN vision is to ensure that, every child and youth has honest information and well-informed support when someone they care about is dying or has died. To that end, we continue to work with our network partners to create programs and resources, offer trainings, and undertake quality research that supports a wide community of individuals who care for and interact with grieving young people. This includes: teachers, coaches, school administrators, clinicians, parents and caregivers, health care providers, spiritual leaders, etc.
CENTRE SURVEY
In order to support our applications and plans for new resources in 2018, we wanted to better understand the community's understanding of grieving children and youth. We created a short, electronic survey in the Fall 2017 and distributed it within our networks (on social media, in newsletters, at network events), and inquired about what types of grief resources people would like to see/were likely to use. We also wanted to know what community members wanted to learn about grief and how they wanted to receive this information.
FAMILY DAY SURVEY
Our inaugural Children's Grief Awareness Family Day was launched in November 2017 and was born out of the expertise of our network partners, in response to the needs of local parents and families and our research findings on the value of peer support and access to local services. We had the pleasure of hosting two Family Day within Halton and Peel Region. Each event was open to all children, youth and caregiver's who were grieving a death within their family.
The Children and Youth Greif Network launched their first ever Children's Grief Awareness Family Days in November 2017.These events were born out of the expertise of our network partners, in response to the needs of local parents and families and our research findings on the value of peer support and access to local services. As part of our process, we were committed to evaluating both the caregiver and children/youth components of the day, to determine what worked well and what can be improved for future offerings. We compiled all of the data and created nfographics to visually represent the key lessons and feelings from the day. Click here to view the parent evaluation and here for the children's evaluation.
Look how we have grown on social media!
Kids Help Phone (KHP) is a National organization that reached over 1.2 MILLION youth last year and mental/ emotional health were the most prominent topic for calls (they don't have a grief category but grief and bereavement is often revealed as a contributing factor during conversation). KHP offers phone, live chat and text services 24/7. KHP also offers post-secondary student counselling support through the Good2Talk line and uses the same information database to do so. According to recent statistics from KHP:
• In 2017, KHP averaged 163 counselling sessions per day – 59, 531 sessions total for the year.
• Most frequently discussed issue is mental and emotional health – 34% of all sessions.
-5% of these calls dealt specifically with the issue of grief
• That means that Kids Help Phone has 3 calls or chats every single day from someone who is grieving! And this does not include calls that are related to grief in other ways.
Drawing on the immense expertise of the network partners, CYGN members updated information, research and best practices to the tip sheets used by the counsellors who interact directly with youth everyday across Canada. CYGN is also continuing to work at using the data collected by KHP to determine the impact of this updated information.
Feedback on the resources has been very positive with counselors across the organization sharing that they are helpful references in their work.
CYGN is very grateful to have this partnership and the opportunity to improve and update information shared with youth experiencing grief. Thank you, Kids Help Phone! Click here to view the results.
YOUTH HANDBOOK SURVEY RESULTS
In February 2018 The Children and Youth Grief Network (CYGN) released the most recent resource aimed to support grieving youth. 'The Handbook for Supporters: Extending Compassion & Care to Grieving Youth' has been widely distributed and the first user survey results are in!
YOUTH HANDBOOK
REVISED CHILDREN'S
HANDBOOK SURVEY
Coming Summer 2019
REVISED CHILDREN'S HANDBOOK SURVEY
Grief and Death Education
Toolkit Survey
Partnership Self Assessment Tool
Children and Youth Greif Network (CYGN) is funded by the Region of Peel's Collaboration Fund. The fund is designed to "support community partners to address complex social problems by working collaboratively to achieve a collective impact.
The Region of Peel has given grant recipients 11 questions to survey with partners and we have been collecting data on ourselves and our growing capacity for three years. Networks need to focus on not only their identified community outcomes but also the processes of the collaboration – an evaluation that measures both the impacts and a pulse on the partnerships is essential in understanding and improving the work and goals of the network. The questions focus on the collective vision of the network, the perceptions and experiences of partners, identifying whether people are engaged, believe in the group's ability and are confident that decisions are transparent and inclusive. CYGN added 2 additional questions in 2018 in order to measure our understanding of regional demographics as well as how well our efforts are inclusive of marginalized or historically oppressed people.
GUESS WHAT? The Children and Youth Grief Network is building its' CAPACITY!! Click here to view our partnership survey.
Region of Peel Children and Youth Grief and Bereavement Needs Assessment
In April 2015, the Children and Youth Grief Network was granted funds from the Region of Peel to conduct a Needs Assessment in the Peel Region. Prepared by Barbara Pidcock and Health Systems Solutions Inc., the needs assessment identified barriers and gaps that prevent or inhibit children and youth from accessing grief and bereavement services.
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