Abstract
In this thesis I examine how the grief-group counselors understand children and how they describe their practice when working with bereaved children.
The reason for why I find it important to describe the counselors understanding of children is that their understandings have quite a big impact of how they describe their work with the children.
As we have seen in some of the laws and reforms considering children participation in their own life situation, often are neglected, and it is the social worker who ends up deciding on behalf of the child. That decision is often affected by the social workers understanding of children, whether she understand children as being qualified to make decisions on their own behalf, or not.
A grief group is a place where a child, who has experienced a loss of someone of importance to that child, is able to meet and to share thoughts, experiences, feelings and be guided by the adults who have a certain knowledge about children, and are able to talk with children in a constructive way about the well-being of the children. Often the adults are teachers, social workers etc. Usually they are educated as grief group counselors. Every second week the grief group gathers, at the school and they spend time together.
Literature studies shows that children who lose an important person in their early childhood, often have an increased risk of not having an education or for developing different serious psychiatric illnesses, and have an increased risk of having serious social problems as a child, but also as grownups.
But if the children participate in a grief counseling group, the children learn how to cope with feelings and different challenges caused by their loss. Furthermore, studies show that grief counseling groups decrease the depression score among grownups, who have lost an important person as a child, this goes as well for young people.
In this thesis I conclude that the way the grief counselors understand children, have a big impact of their work.
I discovered two different perspectives of children.
1. The competent child.
2. Children as equals but not equal in their standing.
Furthermore I found different descriptions of how the grief counselors work with the children’s grief. They focused on:
1. The good memory and life as good.
2. Death as a normal thing in daily life.
3. Techniques used when talking with the children.
- The talk about grief.
- Creative methods when talking about the grief.
In the thesis I have worked with the socialconstructivisme as a theoretical frame, and to answer the thesis’ statement, I have made a thorough analysis based on the principles of Grounded Theory.
I tried to illustrate my results from the Grounded Theory analysis, with different sociologically theories.