Week 9: Special Areas of Practice – Children, Families, and Death

Week 9: Special Areas of Practice – Children, Families, and Death. As an adult, you may struggle with the concepts of death and grief. Imagine these issues weighing down children. Without the understanding that comes with age and experience, children often suffer confusion, insecurity, and even uncertainty about their own survival when faced with death.

This week, you explore how a child’s age, maturity, and culture influence his or her understanding of death and how he or she may experience bereavement.

Week 9: Special Areas of Practice – Children, Families, and Death

Students will:

• Analyze the developmental and cultural influences on children’s understanding of death
• Evaluate intervention approaches for meeting the needs of bereaved children and families

Learning Resources

Note: To access this week’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.

Required Readings

Discussion: Children, Families, and Death

When a child faces the death of a sibling, feelings of vulnerability and insecurity may be magnified. Additionally, because the parents are suffering, too, they may be unavailable or incapable of supporting the other children in the family. When this happens, a child’s grief reaction also is complicated by the seeming loss of the parent(s).

In this Discussion, you describe how the cognitive abilities at various stages of development influence a child’s understanding of death. Imagine yourself as the social worker helping a bereaved child. What skills and interventions would you use?

Week 9: Special Areas of Practice – Children, Families, and Death

By Day 3

Post:

• Explain the implications of young children’s magical thinking and egocentricity on their ability to understand death.
• As a social worker, how can you assist a parent in helping a bereaved child, under 7 years of age, whose older brother died from a suicide by overdose?
• Justify the type of treatment (individual, family, or group) that you would recommend.Week 9: Special Areas of Practice – Children, Families, and Death

By Day 5

Respond to at least two of your colleagues’ posts whose ways of assisting were different from your own.

• Suggest ways to enhance their approach to communicate effectively with the parent.

Week 9: Special Areas of Practice – Children, Families, and Death

Submission and Grading Information

Grading Criteria

To access your rubric:

Week 9 Discussion Rubric

Post by Day 3 and Respond by Day 5

To participate in this Discussion:

Week 9 Discussion

Week in Review

This week you analyzed the developmental and cultural influences on children’s understanding of death and evaluated intervention approaches for meeting the needs of bereaved children and families.

Next week you will explore bullying through a variety of lenses and evaluate different approaches to bullying intervention.

Looking Ahead

Your Week 10 Final Project is due by Day 7 of next week. If you have not already, review the requirement and consider beginning it this week.

To go to the next week:

Week 10