Training for Bereavement Counselling: A six-part course with reading assignments and personal development tasks.
Facilitator John Wilson PhD, Director of The Bereavement Service at York St John University Counselling and Mental Health Centre. 21 years working in the field. Author of Supporting People through Loss and Grief: An Introduction for Counsellors and other Caring Practitioners, (2013) and The Plain Guide to Grief (2020)
Week 1: The Nature of Grief
- Theories of grief and historical perspectives
- The myth of ‘Grief work’
- Developmental and circumstantial loss
Week 2: Attachment Theory – Why is it important to Grief Counselling?
- The work of John Bowlby and colleagues
- The stages and phases of Grief
- Worden’s Task Model
- Adult attachment styles – Hazan and Shaver
- Love and Loss – Parkes
Week 3: Models and Theories of Grief
- Assumptive World – Parkes
- Relearning the World – Attig
- Meaning-making theory – Neimeyer
- Continuing Bonds – Klass, Silverman and Nickman
- Dual Process Model – Stroebe & Schut
- Circles model – Tonkin
- Instrumental and intuitive Grief – Martin & Doka
- Disenfranchised grief – Prigerson
- AAG model – Machin
Week 4: The Complexity and Complications of grief
- Complicated grief, is it a real thing?
- Can you die from grief?
- Does bereavement counselling work?
Week 5: Clinical Assessment & Evaluating Outcomes
- Clinical measures, e.g. CORE, PHQ-9 and GAD-7
- The AGES scale and self-report measure – Wilson, Stiles and Gabriel
Week 6: Family Systems Approach to Grief
- Working with difference
- Rituals and endings
The course is open to all counsellors and counselling support volunteers. It is assumed that all attendees will already have, as a minimum, basic counselling skills and knowledge of a person-centred approach to counselling.
Attendees who are grieving a recent personal loss may find that the content can trigger an episode of renewed grief. They are responsible for their own self-care during the sessions. The facilitator has permission from the clients mentioned to use their anonymous case study examples. Participants are asked to use due diligence in anything they share, which could break boundaries of confidentiality.
Course Content
Presenter
Dr. John Wilson PhD. John has specialised in bereavement and loss for 20 years, as a counsellor, supervisor and trainer. He is author of Supporting People through Loss and Grief: An Introduction for Counsellors and Other Caring Practitioners.
He completed his PhD in 2000 after six years of case study research with bereaved clients. John is a visiting research fellow at York St John University and Director of Bereavement Services at York St John University Counselling and Mental Health Clinic.
Since early March, John has taken a close interest in adapting the outcomes of his doctoral thesis to supporting clients bereaved of a loved one from Covid-19 and those bereaved from other causes during the lockdown.
With other counsellors he runs a closed support group on social media, for those bereaved during the Covid-19 pandemic.
