Fostering Grief Readiness: A Starter Kit for Mental Health and School Mental Health Leadership

Part 1: March 5th, 2024

Part 2: March 12th, 2024

Part 3: March 19th, 2024

Part 4: March 26th, 2024

All workshops are from 2:00 - 3:15 p.m. PT

How might we as systems leaders, managers, and team members support ourselves and each other through policy and practice in the context of loss?

Our workplaces experience loss, bereavement and grief: whether it is an employee who is anticipating or healing from the death of a family member or friend, staff mourning the loss of a colleague, or a team experiencing losses in clients and community, our workplace wellness is predicated on how grief ready we are.

Fostering Grief Ready Workplaces - A Starter Kit for Mental Health and School Mental Health Leadership (2023) aims to provide essential ingredients to guide you and your organization through the basics of supporting a grieving workforce.

Join the Pacific Southwest MHTTC for a unique four-part “text study series” in which we dive into the starter kit and, through dialogue, discourse and discussion, explore ways in which we can become more grief ready. We’ll spend time with the practical activities and strategies you can employ, as well as reflection questions to drive the work.

Notes: 

• Please aim to attend all sessions in the series; at minimum, Session 1 is foundational for the rest of the sessions and text studies.
• We offer this series and the guide not to provide a copy-and-paste solution but instead to offer a framework that each individual school counselor or mental health professional would use to begin developing their team’s unique grief readiness plan, recognizing that each participant holds a distinct role and sphere of influence in their school or organization.
• This text and series are designed for adults in our workplaces navigating grief, rather than for the youth and children we serve; however, there will be a lot of transferable learnings!!

Part 1: Tuesday, March 5, 2024

2:00 - 3:15 p.m. PT (Find your time zone here)

• Grief Readiness: The Basics
• How is Grief Impacting our Workforce?
• Grief at Work by the Numbers
• What might be a benefit of being grief-ready in your own school or workplace?
• Grief is Not Held Equally in Our Nation

Register for Part 1

Part 2: Tuesday, March 12, 2024

2:00 - 3:15 p.m. PT (Find your time zone here)

• Temperature Check: How Grief Sensitive are You/Your Org?
• What's in Your Sphere of Influence?
• Stages of Grief Readiness
• Do Your Research

Register for Part 2

Part 3: Tuesday, March 19, 2024

2:00 - 3:15 p.m. PT (Find your time zone here)

• Managing Through Loss
• Caring for Yourself, While Caring for Others

Register for Part 3

Part 4: Tuesday, March 26, 2024

2:00 - 3:15 p.m. PT (Find your time zone here)

• Crafting Your Grief Readiness Plan
• Crafting Your Bereavement Leave Policy
• Where Do I Go from Here?

Register for Part 4

Each session includes opportunities to engage in questions, discussion, and discourse with our faculty and each other. 

Who are these workshops for?

• Supervisors, managers, directors, administrators and leadership of school and mental health organizations, and agencies
• Human resources professionals, mental health and school mental health providers (e.g., therapists, social workers, peer support professionals)
• Technical assistance providers, coaches, consultants
• Trauma informed professionals
• And anyone else interested in being grief sensitive at work

(If you have participated in our past sessions on this body of work, this is a great opportunity to refresh!)

Faculty

Leora Wolf-Prusan, EdD, is the School Mental Health Field Director for the Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center, a project of SAMHSA that provides no-cost professional development to support the school mental health workforce in the Pacific Islands, Hawaii, California, Nevada, and  Arizona. She also serves as the project director for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) Category II site, the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project (SCRR), formerly served as the field director for a SAMHSA Now is the Time Initiative, ReCAST (Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma), and in addition to these national grants, she provides consulting and training for numerous other clients around issues related to school climate and positive youth development, educator mental health and wellness, and trauma-informed approaches to education. Leora works for the Center for Applied Research Solutions (the home of all these projects), lives in the Bay Area of California (unceded Ohlone land), and is a new parent to a brilliant little human.