About Us

The Highmark Caring Place, A Center for Grieving Children, Adolescents and Their Families, is dedicated to grieving children and families, supporting them in their journey toward hope after a loved one dies.

The Caring Place champions the cause of grieving children by creating awareness of their needs, providing programs for them and their families and empowering the community to effectively serve them.

The Caring Place was started in 1996, with the first facility established in Pittsburgh in 1997. Now with sites in Erie (2001), just outside of Harrisburg (2003), and in Warrendale, PA (2009), the Caring Place has served more than 30,000 family and community members.

The Highmark Caring Place:

Helps children (and adults) understand they're not alone in their grief.
Provides peer support to children and families who are grieving the death of a loved one.
Provides a safe place with safe people so that the children can share their grief, their feelings and their memories.
Is a place where grieving children and families receive support and encouragement from others their age and from trained adult volunteers.
Encourages children to hold the memories of the person who died.
Encourages children to express their feelings, memories and thoughts even when these are difficult to express.

The Caring Place is a community service, available to the whole community. Services are provided at no cost to the families.

Core purpose
Our core purpose is to make a difference in the lives of grieving children.

Core values
The core values of the Highmark Caring Place reflect the heart of our organization and the people within it. Our core values guide:

Our interactions
The development and evaluation of our programs and staff
Our strategic planning

Relationship: We believe that we are stronger together than alone. We place a high value on people and relationships and approach all relationships with a responsiveness that embodies caring, compassion and concern.

Respect: We believe in the intrinsic value of all human beings. We will approach all people and situations with minds and hearts open to difference, and act in a manner that preserves the dignity of others.

Quality: We believe in excellence. We are committed to providing innovative programs based upon sound theoretical models that incorporate best practices.

Integrity: We believe that how we act and interact is as important as what we achieve. We act and make decisions based on the highest ethical standards and we are committed to ensuring consistency between what we say and what we do.

The Highmark Caring Place Supported by the Caring Team

Caring Team for Children is a special team of hundreds of schools, businesses, professional sports teams, corporations and community partners that works together to raise funds and increase community awareness for the needs of children.

Since 1989, this partnership and many others have raised awareness along with more than $5.5 million for children in need.

The Caring Team provides a way for schools to help children and families in their own districts while offering school teachers and administrators opportunities to teach students about the importance of teamwork and helping others.

Caring Team faculty, staff and students have the opportunity to tour Caring Place facilities to help educate students and teachers about children's grief, while school personnel can receive written educational resources about the needs of grieving children.