Neighborhood Hearts...

Neighbors helping Neighbors with Grief!

Summer 2010 Session begins May 26!!!

This program is designed to provide grief support group for children, teens and their caregivers who are experiencing grief and loss. At Neighborhood Hearts you will experience:

 A safe, confidential environment to share feelings and experiences related to grief with their your own age.

An opportunity to express and release feelings through structured and unstructured play, discussion, drama, art, music and movement within a specialized support curriculum.

Educations on the unique ways children grieve to help adults closest to the child better recognize their needs and provide support.

Peer support to grieving parents/caregivers so that they may be supported in their own grief; thereby enabling them to be more equipped to provide the needed support to their children.

Neighborhood Hearts is the result of a collaborative effort between Ryan’s Heart, Hospice of Aroostook, and Pathfinders of Maine. Each of these organizations is committed to providing the education and the support to the grieving children of our communities.

How Neighborhood Hearts Works...

Talking about grief and loss can be difficult for children and adults of all ages. Thoughts and feelings can be expressed through group activities such as games, stories, drawings, puppets, writing and music.

Caregivers or parents who accompany a child will meet in a separate group in the same facility while the child’s group meets. Knowing a loved one is close by provides a sense of security to the children. This arrangement also provides parents and caregivers support and knowledge to help their child through the grief process.

Facilitators will follow a mourning child curriculum guideline. Curriculum's are designed to be a living, breathing document and should continue to evolve over time as a program responds to environment or group participants. Structure in a program is important, but flexibility and an openness that allows the children to direct each session to some extent is the key to using any curriculum.

Children do best in groups where they can be with their same –age peers. Therefore curriculum's are divided by age level so that the group activities reflect the children’s developmental level. It also affords the children to meet other people their own age that have had a similar loss.

Children need many avenues to express their thoughts and feelings and it is encouraged for them to have a good time in a grief support group even though they are talking about painful topics. We provide a multitude of activities that have been designed to allow all children and teens the opportunity to approach their grief using a variety of mediums.

Structure – Children need structure in their group experience that may be absent in their lives. When children experience a significant loss, their families or friends, and lives may feel very uncertain. The topic of the sessions change, the activities change, but the format remains the same. The structure of the program offers them something they can count on every session.

Head and Heart Connections – Children need to make both head and heart connections in their group experience. The group sessions are intended to present the children with topics that alternate between “head work” and “heart work”. Sessions that include activities that tap into “head work” are intended to teach group members death (grief and loss) education, coping, and self-care techniques. The intent is to help them to learn about death and to explore their grief in order to understand both. Sessions that tap into “heart work” are designed to help the children get in touch with their feelings and the pain of their loss.

Remember me... for I am with you always...