Hospice Northwest is looking for facilitators for its expanding children's grief program.
Hospice Northwest launched its Help Us Understand Grief (HUUG) program in Thunder Bay to meet the unique needs of grieving children, and now the program will be made available in many communities east of the city, for which Hospice Northwest needs people with backgrounds in working with children.
Felicia Hiscock, the children’s grief program coordinator, said Hospice Northwest is looking to start offering the program in Nipigon, Terrace Bay, Marathon, Manitouwadge, Geraldton and Longlac in May, and hope to start working with facilitators in those communities in early April.
“We're looking for people that would be willing to be trained and to work probably an average of four to five hours a month working with children in a play-based workshop setting and we're looking for people with an educational background,” she said.
“Teachers, ECEs, teaching assistant,s CYW's, and people with more of a clinical background: social work, therapist background, child life specialists, something along those terms.”
Hiscock says that while Hospice Northwest offers many services for adults around the areas of grief and bereavement, children have unique needs when it comes to grief.
“With children, a lot of times they don't understand the feelings that go along with grief,” she said. “A lot of adults may try and protect children from those feelings or from knowing what happened and research tells us that if a child can understand what they're feeling, they can cope with those feelings much more effectively.”
While originally advertised as a weekend workshop, Hiscock said that the schedule might look different for each community. Hospice Northwest said that it will work with North of Superior Counselling Programs and local schools to announce when the workshops will be starting and in which communities.
For more information about HUUG or becoming a HUUG Weekend Facilitator, Felicia Hiscock can be reached at 807-626-5570 (ext. 5576) or by email at [email protected].
