Mount Ida College

February 27 - March 23, 2012

Bereavement Support Groups for Children and Families
Instructor: Deborah Rivlin, M.A.

This course is designed for anyone interested in beginning a bereavement support group for children and families or for those who are already running a group but would like to share and learn new ideas. We will provide the nuts and bolts of beginning and running a successful program, including some of the challenges that may arise. Understanding developmentally how children cope with death, dying, and loss will be explored, as well as age-appropriate activities that help children develop and strengthen their coping skills. The class will engage in lively discussion of all aspects of running a bereavement support group for children and their parent or caregiver.

Deborah Rivlin, M.A., has been working in the field of bereavement for over thirty years. She worked for eight years as a recreation therapist (Child Life Specialist) in pediatric oncology at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and Boston Children’s Hospital. Since 1988, Deborah has worked with The Good Grief Program of Boston Medical Center and Judge Baker Children’s Center providing psycho-educational workshops around all issues of loss and trauma. Her work included schools, professional conferences, community groups and parent evenings as well as providing crisis intervention and consultations.

In 1998, Deborah developed and served as the director of The CIRCLE, a comprehensive family bereavement support program. In the past ten years there have been CIRCLE support groups in Hingham, Roxbury, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, and Dorchester. Since December of 2001, The CIRCLE program has offered support groups for children and parents, as well as adult only support groups and individual consultations, to families who had a loved one die on September 11th, 2001. In addition, she worked as an adjunct professor at Mount Ida College in Bereavement Studies. Deborah continues her private practice offering both grief counseling and psycho-educational consultations to parents and other adults who work with children. She helps provide language and strategies in how children understand and cope with death, dying and loss from a developmental perspective when someone in their life is ill, in crisis or has died.