Review of Helping Bereaved Children, Second Edition: A Handbook for Practitioners.

Abstract

NANCY BOYD WEBB (Ed.) Helping Bereaved Children, Second Edition: A Handbook for Practitioners New York: Guilford Publications, 2004, 408 pages (ISBN 1-59385-164-2, US$25.00 Paperback) When health policy decision-makers understand the greater societal benefits of providing evidencebased bereavement support to children and adolescents, country will have coordinated, accessible, and comprehensive Loss Support programs for every member. Until then, we are fortunate to have this guide to educate us on how to best support most vulnerable members when someone loved dies. Although the title specifically targets practitioners, believe that the plain language and holistic approach would assist parents and other adults in supporting these children and teens. In section 1, the editor/author's thorough discussion of the elements of children's grief in the home, school, and community provides a clear theoretical framework for understanding almost any scenario that the reader seeks to know more about. Dr. Webb's approach embraces current thinking on the inadequate, confusing language of grief as well as the contradictions between adult and children's grief processes. She posits that children should not be encouraged to disengage from the deceased but to continue the bonds, thus aiding in developmental task mastery. The first section concludes with a rational for professional intervention with some bereaved children and A thoroughly explained assessment tool that includes family, social, religious, and cultural factors that influence the child's state of bereavement. The author convincingly argues that adult-focused literature on delayed, absent, inhibited or unresolved grief does not apply to children who have a need to hold on to the memories and the person who died. Yet it is important to notice when a child's grief is interfering with his/her healthy development. As a way to notice, Dr. Webb proposes the term, disabling grief so that our deliberate use of the term indicates that something is wrong. Part 2 begins with complicated grief case studies demonstrating the use of the assessment tools and describing sessions with the therapist after the loss of family, and emphasizing the importance of offering the child a choice in the type of intervention that she/he participates in. This approach argues against an all-too-common attitude that occurs in many fami lies today - the gatekeeper and/or paternalistic scenario where a parent may not allow his/her child to receive professional support or may impose on the child the type of support the child receives. The editor/author also acknowledges the intense grief when parents divorce and compares it to the grief following death. Part 2 continues with three contributing authors exploring other complicated scenarios - sibling grief, death, and violent death. Dr. Davies shares observations of many bereaved siblings, concluding that generally siblings report not being able to talk or learn about their grief as it occurred. It was often later in life when they had insights about what really happened. She offers four general sibling responses: I hurt inside. do not understand. do not belong. am not enough. When surviving siblings were not given opportunities to express their grief, they were left believing that, although they were hurting inside, they should be able to deal with it themselves because all those around them were, as evidenced by the thundering silence. Elder and Knowles use current language of and completed suicide when discussing the impact on a family, rather than the stigma-perpetuating committed suicide. They eloquently describe how the child either is forced to endure the label of being in the bad family or to go through life believing a false story about the cause of death only to find out the truth decades later. …