Grief Support Specialist Certificate (Online)

Grief is universal; our students are international

Students from across the globe take the Grief Support Specialist Certificate

“It was a pleasure and privilege to be a part of this program. The information and knowledge gained was second to none. What I loved about this class were the modular layout, the videos, and the quick and encouraging responses from the instructors. I believe this course is fundamental to all hoping to assist anyone with loss.”

— Muriel Williams, online student from Bermuda

In the news

Read stories about this program in Isthmus and Brava Magazine.

Week One: Psycho-Spiritual Model of Care, Theories and Tools - Doug Smith, lead instructor, explains a Psycho-Spiritual Model of Care and discusses grief counseling assessments, assessing for someone’s style of grieving, personal strengths and personal needs. Doug also focuses on the grief counseling theories and tools of J. William Worden, Thomas Attig, John James and Russell Friedman as well as general grief counseling tools and techniques.

Objectives Week One:

1. Explain a style of counseling that helps people find meaning and value in the midst of suffering, even if the suffering cannot be removed.
2. Describe the differences between “intuitive” (feeling-centered) grievers and “instrumental” (cognitive-centered or action-centered) grievers.
3. Use a client’s own strengths to encourage self-help and self-determination.
4. Explain the counseling theories of Worden, Attig, James & Friedman.
5. Identify and use various tools and techniques that help clients process their feelings and thoughts related to loss.

Week Two: Supporting Children and Adolescents in Loss - Molly Tomony describes the developmental, relationship and cultural variables influencing how children and adolescents understand and cope with loss/death/change. Participants will explore ways to creatively support children by learning hands-on experiential activities.

Objectives Week Two:

1. Examine the cognitive, emotional and physical grief responses based upon a client’s developmental age.
2. Describe cultural, religious and relationship variables affecting children’s grief.
3. Develop creative individual and group interventions to support grieving children and adolescents.
4. Describe what disenfranchised traumatic loss is and how it may impact an individual’s coping.

Week Three: Spirituality - Doug Smith discusses spiritual issues and variables influencing attitudes towards loss along with tools and techniques addressing a client's spiritual concerns.

Week Three: Cultural Competence - Gabriela Caballero-Moersfelder discusses cultural influences in grief counseling by taking a deeper look at grief and loss in the Latino community as a lens to understand the importance of cultural humility. This session is designed to assist participants in enhancing their toolbox for working with multicultural clients.

Week Three: Traumatic Grief - Doug Smith explains how to move beyond grief counseling with individuals or small groups to see ways to address large-scale grieving that a community may experience.

Objectives Week Three:

1. Explain several ways of assessing someone’s spiritual language.
2. Describe how to discover someone’s spiritual concerns and expectations.
3. Use prayer/meditation with clients of various religious/spiritual backgrounds.
4. Explain the influences of various prejudices on grief education/counseling, examining both the counselor’s and client’s perspectives.
5. Develop a basic set of multicultural clinical practice competencies that can be used as guidelines for working with diverse patients and families.
6. Identify options for addressing large-scale trauma that leaves large groups dealing with grief.

Week Four: Working with Atypical Types of Grief – Erica Srinivasan discusses features of disenfranchised grief, ambiguous loss, and complicated grief and ways to work with people experiencing those.

Week Four: Self-care for Grief Counselors- Molly Tomony provides tools and techniques to help grief educators/counselors deal with compassion fatigue and care for themselves, equipping them to continue to care for others.

Objectives Week Four:

1. Define ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief and complicated grief and identify tools for helping clients cope with these challenges.
2. Explain the nature of compassion fatigue and why grief educators/ counselors cannot ignore its potential impact on them.
3. Describe techniques that can help care for and recharge oneself.

Project/Paper Assignment: Each student will develop a project or paper related to his/her particular interests: e.g. an outline for a book, a job design/proposal and strategy, a research paper on an aspect of grief counseling/support. Doug Smith will be available for consulting on these projects/papers.

Sharing projects with others: Students will share a description of their project online with the other participants and learn from the sharing of others.

Objectives for the Project/Paper:

1. Review the course content.
2. Integrate key learnings into a paper or project of your choosing that will help you professionally or personally.
3. Review other’s projects and provide substantive and supportive comments.

Certificates and documentation of continuing education hours are granted upon satisfactory completion of the program and project and will be sent within four weeks of course completion.

By participating in this class you will earn:

Explanation of Continuing Education Hours