Grieving families join other families at the Caring Place so that children of all ages, as well as adults, can meet together with their peers who have also experienced a death. Fifteen to 20 families come together for ten meetings every other week over four or five months.

Support services for the families, along with dinner, are provided at no cost to the families. The Caring Place is supported by community contributions, matched dollar for dollar by Highmark Blue Shield.

Teens meet together with their peers, and with trained adult volunteers, to share together their memories, their feelings and their experiences.

Traveling their roads of grief together, middle-school-age children gather for fun times and deep times, able to laugh together and cry together after they've built trust in each other.

Young-school-age children are encouraged by trained adult volunteers to find many ways to express their grief, from art, puppets, and telling stories, to writing on the wall-boards and sharing photographs of the person who died.

All members of a family come to the Caring Place, including the youngest. Here, some of the young ones help Sheena with the Pledge that begins every meeting: "I am here for you. You are here for me. We are here for each other."

Parents and guardians of the children who come also attend, sharing their own grief with one another, as well as the ups and downs of living as a single parent or holding the household together after a child has died.

Children and adults enjoy themselves in the Family Activities Room, finding fun and laughter in the midst of grief.

The Expressions Room is a safe place within which children can express a very normal side of grief-anger over the death of a loved one.