Bereavement care has moved into a more virtual space since the pandemic’s onset as hospices worked quickly to implement telehealth systems. These systems gave them access to patients and families when COVID-19 forced the need to socially distance. Extending a virtual aspect of grief support in a post-pandemic landscape could be beneficial for hospice providers looking to reach grieving children and families.
The killer virus has claimed upwards of 600,000 lives nationwide, according to a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). COVID-19 exacerbated the need for bereavement care. Many hospices have been in need of additional resources to meet rising demand. Adapting programs to comply with social distancing recommendations meant taking grief services online as hospices mobilized to respond to the pandemic.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires hospice providers to offer bereavement counseling for a minimum of 13 months following a patient’s death, but hospices often go above and beyond by making grief care available to their entire communities, regardless of whether the deceased was their patient.
Social distancing restrictions hit many families hard, creating increased anxiety, depression, loneliness and isolation in addition to the loss of a loved one. With limited options, many turned to technology to continue supporting grieving families, leveraging virtual summer grief camps in response to growing need.
While an in-person experience offers a physical outlet, a virtual setting can offer aspects of grief support that can be particularly beneficial for children who have experienced the death of a loved one, as well as for their families, according to Karen Monts, director of grief support services for Hospice of Michigan and Arbor Hospice. A virtual platform for grief support had been on the horizon prior to the pandemic, but it served as a push to move things forward, according to Monts.
“I had been encouraging my team to really start thinking about phone, virtual and video conferences in the last few years, but the pandemic pushed us to quickly move into a virtual format for our bereaved,” Monts told Hospice News. “One of the most important benefits of a virtual platform is the fact that families don’t have to travel and that the parents can be there and can be present. Sometimes that can feel safer for children.”
Hospice of Michigan and Arbor Hospice are non-profit organizations as part of the NorthStar Care Community network, with providers that serve more than 5,000 patients annually throughout Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Both Hospice of Michigan and Arbor Hospice provide hospice and palliative care, along with caregiver education and support, community education programs and grief support services.
“This was the time we had to really lean in to help people because of the multiplicity of issues that surrounded the pandemic. The bereaved needed to feel like we had not left them, because everything else shut down,” said Monts. “Hospices had to reimagine their grief support programs, and you had to do it really quick. People were struggling with social isolation, loneliness, amplified and disenfranchised grief, multiple losses and grief dynamics. We couldn’t shut down grief support, too, it was still essential.”
Together the hospices host an annual camp called Camp Good Grief, which will roll out in a virtual format This program returns for its second year on July 31. The virtual one-day retreat is offered free of charge to grieving families with children ages 8 to 17 in Michigan and includes arts, crafts and musical and conversational activities aimed at helping younger age groups navigate loss.
“We want to grow [bereavement services] and explore other avenues of technology that we can use so that it continues to be appealing and that children will want to be involved in,” said Monts. “I don’t think we want to completely lose being able to come back face-to-face. You can’t take away from the experience of kayaking and zip lining, but there were also people who couldn’t attend camp because of transportation issues or parents couldn’t take time away from work to drop them off. People attended virtually who would not have been able to in the past.”
Adding a virtual layer to grief support, whether a hybrid of virtual and in-person grief camp or separate camps offered is a strong consideration, according to Monts. Travel time and cost to participate in an n-person grief camp represented a large barrier for many families. A virtual format allowed parents to be present and join in on activities to support their children. Hospice staff were also able to see the impacts of the grief camp in a new way through the virtual setting.
“We were able to get their materials to kids ahead of time so that they could come to virtual camp having planned and already painted their memory boxes and do some work with their parents. That aspect was probably the greatest benefit of being able to do this virtually,” said Monts. “The kids came and talked about their memory boxes and not only did they talk about how they painted it and what color they chose, but they also opened the boxes and showed us the trinkets that belonged to their loved ones. This was important, really powerful and really impactful to see how our grief support has evolved.”
As more schools going virtual in the last year with remote learning was part of the push towards technology and device accessibility, Monts stated, overcoming an initial concern and cost consideration of the provider. Funding support from local organizations and community members also played a role in providing the needed equipment for virtual grief programming to expand. Supporters donated devices such as laptops and tablets for children who didn’t have them.
A virtual platform can help reduce staffing costs for hospices as well, reducing the amount of staffing hours down from a full day in-person to broken up time slots and scheduling, along with reduced reimbursement costs for staff traveling to the onsite camp location, according to Monts.
Children grieve differently than adults, Monts said, and a virtual platform can help children experiencing traumatic loss to feel emotionally safer, providing a place from the comfort of home while still offering a way to bond and experience grief with other children and families.
“We’ve learned that when children have had a loss and watched a loved one die in the home, it can be traumatizing over time and can lead to trauma-like reactions after their death,” Monts told Hospice News. “What we hope to do in any camp experience is to let kids know it’s okay to be a kid and have a childlike response to grief. We want to normalize that for them, validate it and experience with them when they come to any camp — and do that in a virtual format as well.”
Companies featured in this article:
Arbor Hospice, Hospice of Michigan, NorthStar Care Community
