The Center for Grieving Children invites adults interested in working with children, teens and their families to apply to become a volunteer from September through end of May. Volunteers are needed to support children, teens and their caregivers during peer-support grief groups, held every two weeks in the evenings in one of four sites in Philadelphia – Lower Northeast, East Falls, West Philly, and South Philly. We are in need to volunteers who can travel to the Northeast (Tuesday evenings) or South Philly (Wednesday evenings).
Applicants who successfully complete the application, screening and in-person interview will receive training on grief support and children’s development, during the evenings of August 7
th
& 8
th
. For those unable to attend those evenings, another training will be held on a Saturday in August (date still to be determined).
Volunteers accepted into the training will need to complete clearances for Child Abuse, FBI fingerprinting, and Criminal History. Each newly trained volunteer that is accepted into the program will be paired with a staff clinician or an experienced volunteer during grief groups.
Grief groups are held for about 1.5 hours, where we do arts and crafts activities with children and teens to promote grief expression and also hold discussions on how to support grieving children with their caregivers in separate groups. Pre-group and post-group meetings are held each time for 30 minutes each, for a total time commitment of 2.5 hours every other week. Interested persons can contact The Center with inquiries or complete the online application at
http://grievingchildren.org/get-involved/
. Experience in working with children and families is encouraged but not required.
All in-person interviews and training will be held at our East Falls offices in Philadelphia.