Helping a child cope with loss by using grief therapy

Abstract

This paper describes a case study of the application of ideas and practices from grief therapy in eight sessions of work with a child by integrating the art and play elements. The social worker helped the client to go through four tasks suggested by Worden (1991) for handling grief, which consist of accepting the reality of the loss, working through the pain of grief, adjusting to an environment in which the deceased is missing, and emotionally relocating the deceased and moving on with life. Excerpts from the transcription of the different sessions are included to demonstrate the positive changes of client’s mood and behaviours.