Working effectively with

traumatic grief

Nicola Dobson – Family Support Services Lead

Willow Wood Hospice, Tameside

Overview

What is grief?

Models of grief

Working with grief – methods &

impact

Keeping ourselves safe

Lois Tonkin’s ‘Growing Around

Grief’

Data from Apr-Dec 2017 – client

categorisation at start of intervention

82.5% categorized with moderate to

severe psychological distress

29% categorized with severe psychological

distress

Help people to see that grief is an active process which requires them to meet challenges

Support people to use coping strategies that work for them, and to develop new ones

Motivate people to resist the attractions of grief

Listen, suggest, rehearse, inspire, comfort, console, debrief, normalise, acknowledge, validate…

Based on Attig, T. “How We Grieve” (1996)

Resources

Practical

Resources

Practical (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs)

Physical (strength, agility, activities)

Psychological (humour, memory, intelligence, coping mechanisms)

Inter-personal (people and animals)

Spiritual (faith and non-faith based)

Data from Apr-Dec 2017 – client

categorisation at end of intervention

88% categorized as healthy or with low

level or mild psychological distress

40% categorized as healthy

52% making significant movement of 3-5

categories

Keeping ourselves safe

“You can’t wipe the tears from someone else’s face without getting your hands wet.”

Zulu proverb

Any questions?