Best Practices in Community Bereavement Support

BEST PRACTICES IN COMMUNITY BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT

“Grief is a solitary journey. No one but you knows how great the hurt is. No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life when someone you know has died. And no one but you can mourn the silence that was once filled with laughter and song. It is the nature of love and of death to touch every person in a totally unique way. Comfort comes from knowing that people have made the same journey. And solace comes from understanding how others have learned to sing again.”

-Helen Steiner Rice

Bereaved Families of Ontario-Toronto’s (BFO-Toronto) Beliefs

We believe that:

·  No-one can understand a bereaved person like another bereaved person

·  The deep grief that individuals, families and communities feel after a death is

normal under the circumstances

·  Grief is a unique experience for every person

·  Everyone carries within themselves the capacity to heal

BFO-Toronto uses a peer/mutual support model in providing bereavement support. This model is very ‘user-friendly’ for community members, social service workers, employees, students etc. as it is based on and uses the strengths and lived experiences of ordinary bereaved people.

Definition of Terms

Bereavement – the state of having suffered a loss

Grief – the psychological, behavioural, social, emotional, spiritual and physical reactions to a loss. It is the process that allows us to say good-bye to what was and to get ready for that which is yet to come

Mourning – Any public shared expression of a person’s thoughts, behaviours and emotions related to the loss

Anticipatory Grief – The process stimulated by awareness of impending loss/death

Multiple Loss – experiencing constant and sustained loss, often while anticipating further losses

Peer support refers to help and assistance that is given to you by someone like you - someone who shares a similar set of experiences, and in this case, someone who is also bereaved. Someone, who may have no professional training in counselling but has become an “expert” at their own grief and who can provide information, experiential knowledge and support that is gained through their lived experience of being similarly bereaved.

Mutual support (or self-help) is a process of sharing common experiences, situations or problems. Self-help is participatory in nature and involves getting help, giving help and learning to help yourself as well as sharing knowledge and experience. The primary focus of self-help is emotional support, practical support and informational exchange.

Best Practices

The following are the best practises that BFO-Toronto has gathered over the past 28 years and what we have learnt as a result of the outreach to Toronto’s communities that we recently embarked upon.

By no means is this an exhaustive list of best practices. We understand that there is always more to learn, in terms of each individual’s and each community’s unique ways of grieving. We respect that each individual and each community also has their own ways of coping, based on their culture, their faith and their life experiences. BFO-Toronto’s intent is to offer additional insights and knowledge to support individual, family and community healing.

Although grief impacts differently on each individual and each cultural group, grief is a universal experience, which has a profound affect on our lives.

Supporting bereaved people in the community

Although BFO-Toronto believes the best support comes from someone who has had a similar loss experience, there are other factors that help caring, community supporters make connections with individuals who have had a tragic loss. These include community members who come from the same or similar culture, race, age, faith and gender, as the bereaved person. What matters most is that the supporter can identify with the grieving community member, which provides the bereaved person with a sense of being understood. Being understood in one’s grief journey is a critical piece of the healing process.

The following Dos and Don’ts will help anyone give the kind of support that bereaved people and families need, not only immediately after the death of their loved one, but sometimes for many months and even years later.

DO

·  Tell the family how sorry you are about their loved one’s death and about the pain they must be feeling

·  Accept where the bereaved person ‘is at’. Accept that shortly after the death the bereaved person may be in shock and/or denial. These initial experiences are normal reactions and help a person to begin to adapt to their loss. If they persist they may become maladaptive and no longer helpful, coping strategies.

·  Listen with compassion and suspend judgment. You don't need to say anything profound or especially insightful, and you don’t have to ‘fix’ anyone.

·  Realize that sometimes you just need to be present and sit with the bereaved person, keeping them company

·  Recognize that everyone grieves at their own pace in their own time. Often its just one day at a time

·  Validate the bereaved person’s feelings, even if their feelings are different from what yours may be

·  Encourage people to talk about their loss, if they are ready, but don’t push them to talk. Story telling about the deceased person is an important part of the healing process

·  Respect their privacy, and understand that they may need some time alone

·  Understand that bereaved people may not have the energy to do everyday things and may have to rely on others to think of things that they don’t know how to ask for

·  Normalize the person’s experience. Their intense feelings are a normal part of the grief journey and are not unusual

·  Understand that a safe environment is very important. Bereaved people often have strong emotions and feel very vulnerable and need a safe place to express and explore these feelings and emotions

·  Allow them to express as much grief as they are able and are willing to share with you

·  Let them talk about the person and how they feel about death, as often as they want

·  Give special attention to surviving family members such as brothers and sisters at the funeral and in the months to come. If their sibling died, their bereaved parents may not be able to give them as much as they would like to during the early phases of grief

·  When bereaved people are ready to adjust to their ‘new normal’ explore with them what has helped them through the tough times before in their lives, and then help them to identify and build on these internal strategies of resiliency

·  Acknowledge that some sorrow may always be there, but the duration may lessen

·  Support ways to remember and honour the past. Send a card of remembrance on an anniversary date.

DON”T

·  Say “you should be coping better now” or anything else which may appear judgemental about their grieving progress

·  Don’t tell a bereaved person what they should feel or do

·  Support false hopes and misconceptions

·  Give advice about being busy, getting involved, forgetting the past and making the best of it

·  Change the subject when they talk about their deceased loved one. Let them decide when to change the subject

·  Avoid mentioning the loved one’s name. Families haven’t forgotten the death and if you mention the name of their loved one it will bring positive memories

·  Look for something positive in the situation or for some moral lesson

·  If the bereaved person’s child has died don’t say they can always have other children. Even if they could, another child does not replace the child who has died

“Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow.

Don’t walk behind me I may not lead

Just walk beside me and be my friend”