Family Centered

The Caring Place equips the entire family to deal with their grief, since a death affects the entire family. Family members are helped to see how they can support and understand each other in different ways.

The Caring Place is family-centered since we know that grief not only affects the individuals in a family, but the whole family system as well. When a loved one dies, no member of the family escapes the impact.

All the adults and children (from infants through high school students) from the family have the opportunity to attend the Caring Place together.

In addition to the emotional support this provides for the family, this also relieves the burden of arranging child-care for very young children.

"Even though you're not actually together with your parent the whole time, it’s good to know that you’re just a room away while you’re at the Caring Place. I think my Mom being a part of the Caring Place with me was really important. Because she didn’t know how to act when I was angry, or how to handle things. But hearing from the other adults helped her, and my group helped me, and so we’ve basically moved on together." — Brooke, 14

Children obviously spend more time at home than they do at the Caring Place. With that in mind, the Caring Place works to equip the entire family to deal with their grief, and to provide an experience in which family members can see in many different ways how they can support each other.

Parents or guardians gain an understanding of what their children are feeling and why they act the ways they do, while family bonds strengthen and mutual understanding deepens.

"The Caring Place broke down the barrier between Brooke and I. After the accident, we were struggling so much; we both didn't know what to do. We'd butt heads back then, we didn't talk. Then we were both going through the same thing at the Caring Place, and it brought us back together. We can talk now. The Caring Place helped take that wall away and we got each other back. We got each other back and that's a good thing." — Irene, Brooke's mother

Because finding a way to talk about the heartache — and even knowing how to start the conversation with one another — is so difficult, when a family attends the Caring Place together, the activities they participate in during the sessions help to jumpstart this difficult process of sharing feelings and memories with one another.