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  1. Resources to Support Youth Who Have Lost a Caregiver

Resources to Support Youth Who Have Lost a Caregiver


For Youth Coping With Loss

Childhood Traumatic Grief: Youth Information Sheet
This fact sheet provides information for youth to help them understand the differences between grief and traumatic grief after a loved one dies, the signs and symptoms of traumatic grief in children and youth, and what to do to feel better.

Ready to Remember: Jeremy’s Journey of Hope and Healing
This children’s book tells the story of a boy named Jeremy who is experiencing childhood traumatic grief (CTG) after his father’s death. The story highlights signs and symptoms of CTG that Jeremy experiences and traces his acceptance of his loss and beginning of recovery.


For Families, Kinship, and Other Caregivers Helping Youth Through Loss

After a Loved One Dies: How Children Grieve and How Parents and Other Adults can Support Them
This resource (PDF, 24 pages) aims to support parents and other adults in helping children who have the lost a parent or loved one through their grief. Topics covered include explaining death to children, common child responses to death, helping children cope over time, and finding additional support for children.

Center for Resilience and Well-Being – Providing Support When Violent Things Happen: Talking to Children and Teens
This webpage offers guidance for adults who surround youth to support them in conversation when violent and scary things happen in the world, coping resources in response to mass violence events, and additional resources for college students, staff, and families affected by violence and loss.

Children Living in Kinship Care and Nonrelative Foster Care Are Unlikely to Receive Needed Early Intervention or Special Education Services
This article discusses the positive impacts that voluntarily living in kinship care after losing a parent has on children’s likelihood to have an Individualized Family Services Plan (IFSP) for receiving early intervention for developmental, cognitive, or academic delays.

Grandfamilies and Kinship Families: Strengths and Challenges
This fact sheet — available in English and Spanish — describes the unique strengths and challenges grandparents and other kinship caregivers face when they step into the role of primary caregiver, often suddenly.

Helping School-Age Children with Traumatic Grief: Tips for Caregivers
This resource describes how school-age children may feel when struggling with the death of someone close and offers tips on what caregivers can do to help.

Helping Teens with Traumatic Grief: Tips for Caregivers
This resource describes how teens may feel when struggling with the death of someone close and offers tips on what caregivers can do to help.

Kinship Care Resources
This webpage provides an overview of kinship care as well as resources and information on changing family dynamics, financial and legal supports, and permanency.

Resources to Help Children Cope with Tragedy
This webpage provides a list of national resources for family members, community leaders and social service providers to help children cope with violent and traumatic events.

Rosie Remembers Mommy: Forever in her Heart Video
This video uses the story of Rosie, a young girl who is struggling after the death of her mother, to illustrate how a parent can provide solace and support to a child after the death of a loved one.

The Power of Parenting During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Addressing Fears and Feelings from Prior Losses
This fact sheet provides caregivers guidance about how to address fears and feelings of prior losses that come up for children during COVID-19. The resource offers information on loss and trauma reminders, coping with separation, and the mind-body connection.

The Power of Parenting During the COVID-10 Pandemic: Helping Children Cope with the Impending Death of a Loved One
This fact sheet provides caregivers guidance about how to address the impending death of a loved one due to COVID-19 with their child. The resource offers information on anticipating a death, preparing a child for the death, and saying goodbye.

The Power of Parenting During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mourning the Death of a Loved One
This fact sheet provides caregivers guidance on mourning the death of a loved one due to COVID-19. The resource offers information on saying goodbye when you couldn't be there, understanding developmental differences in behaviors associated with grief, and seeking alternative support if needed.

Traumatic Grief
This website discusses the effects of traumatic grief on a child and how it may manifest, evidence-based effective interventions for youth, and additional resources/one-pagers for youth and those who care about them.
 

For Schools and Child-Serving Professionals

Best Practices and Helpful Considerations for Responding to Traumatic Stress in Schools for School Staff
This training addresses the adverse impact of traumatic stress on school staff, particularly considering pandemic-related loss of loved ones, familial financial losses, isolation, loss of stability, perception of danger, and fear of the unknown. The recording includes best practices and helpful considerations for use when responding to traumatic stress in schools.

Center for Tribes: Trauma-Informed Youth Transitions in Tribal Child Welfare
This fact sheet explores trauma-informed practice strategies for Tribal child welfare caseworkers to implement during a child’s transition to out-of-home placement and as they transition back home.

Children and COVID-19: ASPR TRACIE Experiences from the Field
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) TRACIE recently worked with ASPR’s Pediatric Centers of Excellence to help stakeholders better understand how the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting children.

Colorado Supported Training
Two versions of this resource kit exist: one for EMS and other emergency medical providers and another for non-medical providers, educators and caregivers that support children during disasters, emergencies, or individual crises. The kit contains the following two components:

  1. Engage-Calm-Distract - provides foundational material on pediatric distress and information on applying developmentally appropriate strategies and activities for engaging, calming, and distracting children and their caregivers.
  2. Pediatric Emotional Distress Reference System (PEDRS) – a field reference guide of common distress reactions by developmental level with age-appropriate calming and distraction activities.

Considering Faith, Community, and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Crisis
This document is designed to help faith and community-based leaders as they serve people experiencing fear and anxiety associated with COVID-19. The document contains resources that address these fears and the mental health concerns that may be associated with COVID-19.

Creating Time and Space for Trauma Recovery and Wellness
This resource aims to support tribal health care providers and non-tribal health care providers who serve tribal people, as they process the trauma, stress, fear, and anxiety that is felt as they do their jobs during today’s critical environment.

Cultivating Compassionate School Communities that Respond to Trauma Effectively
This 12-hour course offers recommendations to cultivate a compassionate school community that will buffer against the negative effects of trauma, build resilience for all students, and provide stress-relief and enhanced well-being for teachers, other school personnel, and students.

Exploring the Impact of Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences on Substance Misuse and Substance Use Disorder Prevention Efforts
In this training, prevention professionals will consider how to apply an understanding of the impact of trauma and ACEs on substance misuse to prevention efforts from assessment to the implementation of prevention interventions.

Evidence-Based Treatments for Grief
This fact sheet is designed to help mental health professionals and school mental health personnel support patients, students, and families who may be experiencing grief. It highlights evidence-based treatments for managing grief.

Families and Trauma
This website explains the range of impacts that trauma can have on families and provides resources to help families cope after a trauma. Examples of resources include:

  1. Family Resilience and Traumatic Events: A Guide for Mental Health Providers
  2. Trauma and Families: Fact Sheet for Providers

Handout: Pediatric Integrated Care
This infographic defines pediatric integrated care as the early identification and treatment of trauma, social, emotional, and behavioral problems in children that can lead to better quality of life and better health outcomes. Practical examples of pediatric integrated care are provided.

Making the Case for Trauma-Informed Practices in Schools
This recorded training provides strategies for talking about trauma in schools, tips for self-regulation and self-care for trainers, needs assessment tools to determine the most important topics to focus on, and implementation guidance for structuring and developing effective TIP training in your school.

National Native Children’s Trauma Center: Trauma and Resiliency Resources
This webpage contains resources, tips sheets, and studies about implementing trauma-informed supports for Native American youth inside and outside the classroom.

On Demand: Pediatric Mental Health in the Wake of a Pandemic
This webinar discusses effective strategies for promoting recovery from pandemic related distress among children. Risk and protective factors for negative mental health impacts–such as pre-existing vulnerabilities, contextual issues related to children’s COVID experiences, and the effectiveness of response efforts–are explored.

Preventing Long-Term Anger and Aggression in Youth (PLAAY)
This webinar recording discusses how Preventing Long-Term Anger and Aggression in Youth (PLAAY) is being implemented with various cultural groups in different regions, highlights additional culturally responsive “PLAAY practices” being utilized across the Network/in different regions, and shares lessons learned during the implementation of PLAAY.

Preventive Strategies and Protective Factors:
This fact sheet discusses preventive strategies and protective resources to help mental health professionals and school mental health personnel support patients, students, and families who may be experiencing complicated grief.

Resource Guide for Native American / Alaska Native Behavioral Health Providers During COVID-19 and Beyond
This guide is tailored for behavioral health providers who are Native and/or are working with American Indian and Alaska Native individuals. Topics include general resources, telehealth, resources for children/youth, self-care, staying connected, diversity and equity, and upcoming relevant events.

The Mental Health Impacts of Surviving COVID-19
This conversation with COVID-19 survivors discusses how the experience of surviving COVID-19 and experiencing long-haul COVID-19 can impact mental health. Participants explore what school mental health providers and leaders can and should understand about that experience.

The National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement
This website provides materials and guidance for schools experiencing crises or helping grieving students as well as resources and guidelines to prepare to support children in times of crisis and loss.

Trauma-Informed Approaches for School Mental Health Providers
This webinar recording includes a review of system-level approaches to trauma-informed care in schools and offers practical strategies and guidance to school mental health providers who want to deliver trauma-informed and healing-centered practices in their work with students.

Trauma Informed Youth Peer Support: An Essential Tool for Supporting Youth
This workshop recording explores the foundations of trauma-informed care, including its principles and philosophy, why trauma-informed care is important, strategies for incorporating trauma-informed practices throughout youth peer support services, and concrete examples of what trauma-informed practice looks like in action and how to apply the philosophy within peer relationships.