[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/TheGreen-11072014-GriefGroup.mp3|titles= Delaware Public Media's Tom Byrne and contributor Larry Nagengast discuss Supporting Kidds and its work.]
When Kristen Dunne’s daughter died, she knew she needed help, not only for herself but also for her two surviving children, who were certain to struggle through the grieving process. She called Supporting Kidds.
When John Hundley filled out his United Way donor card, he directed that his contributions be sent to a charity he knew little about. When he received a handwritten thank-you note from its executive director, he made a phone call to find out more. That was 16 years ago. He has been a volunteer facilitator of Supporting Kidds ever since.
When Jay Wheeler decided to organize a 5-kilometer run to honor an aunt who had died of cancer, he asked her sons about their desires for a charitable beneficiary. They said they preferred one that assisted children in need. He chose Supporting Kidds. The first Cathy Wheeler Hartman memorial run raised $14,000 last year. The second race, held Sunday, could wind up raising as much as $20,000.
As the only nonprofit in Delaware dedicated to helping children deal with grief and tragedies, “Supporting Kidds is extremely unique,” says Nina Bennett, co-chair of the Delaware Grief Awareness Consortium, the sponsor of Grief Awareness Week, which is observed annually during the first full week of November.
The Hockessin-based nonprofit, which is also celebrating its 25th anniversary in November, provides support groups and individual counseling for children and their families.
Founded in 1989 by the Rev. Marlene Walters, then the minister at Mount Lebanon United Methodist Church in Brandywine Hundred, the organization originally branded itself with an acronym, Supporting KIDDS, with the letters standing for Kids In Divorce, Death and Separation.
In its early years, it offered a balanced menu of services addressing each of those traumatic situations. Then, around 2000, Hundley recalls, the state, through Family Court, increased the services it made available to families dealing with divorce. With that change, the organization began to focus more intensively, but not exclusively, on grief associated with the death or illness of a child’s relative or close friends.
“There are more counseling resources for divorce and separation now than there were years ago. In the grief and illness area, there are fewer counselors and agencies that specialize,” says Stephanie Sklodowski, Supporting Kidds’ clinical director.
“All the losses [that we treat] don’t have to be death,” adds Debbie Throckmorton, the organization’s office manager. “Kids move to the West Coast from the East Coast, leaving friends behind. There’s the death of pets. There’s some terminal illness, to prepare them, and then they come to us afterwards as well.”
“I’ve seen the people going there — a mother and a father with two kids, which means a sibling had passed away, and a child with one parent incarcerated and another parent murdered. This is heavy stuff,” says Wheeler, a Brandywine Hundred resident and financial advisor at Wheeler Financial in Greenville. “They want to give kids a pathway towards healing,” he adds.
“A lot of these children have not had the opportunity to be around others who are in the same situation. It’s a bonding experience for them,” Sklodowski says. “And parents and guardians learn how to support their children.”
“Supporting Kidds has a really unique way of engaging kids, making it almost fun, something to look forward to, to be around other children who are also grieving,” says Dunne, a Pike Creek resident who sought counseling for her son and daughter after their sister Molly died in May 2012 after a 20-month illness that started on her first day of kindergarten.
Dunne went through the organization’s six-week Healing Pathways program twice, first with Molly’s twin Kate, who is now 10, and later with both Kate and her brother Ryan, who is now 12. “Both kids had a hard time at first. They didn’t necessarily want to go and talk about Molly,” she recalls.
By having Kate participate in the program first (Ryan didn’t want to miss out on a sports commitment), Dunne says she could see differences in how the two children handled grief. “It really helped Kate to be able to vocalize her feelings, that she was grieving and feeling sad, in a kid way,” Dunne says.
“Both kids got a lot out of it, and it helped me as a parent,” she says, mentioning not only suggestions on how to focus positively on the future but also advice she received in responding to her children’s emotions and to unexpected questions they posed about death.
“There’s a whole range of feelings” that facilitators encounter but the process used is similar, no matter what the age levels of the children in the group, says volunteer Hundley, a Newark resident who is director of site operations for Westside Family Healthcare. “In week one, they get to know each other, share the story of the death. The children are often hesitant, but by week three they can’t wait to get in…. Once they figure out what you’re really trying to do, it’s like a fun school, without the homework.” The six-week program ends with a pizza party and an art show.
While the children are participating in group sessions divided by age levels, parents or guardians are participating in their own counseling and support program.
Some families, like the Dunnes, will return for a second six-week session with a support group. Others will attend one-night programs, like the one scheduled for Nov. 19 on coping with the holiday season or others scheduled near Mothers Day and Fathers Day and before the start of the school year.
In addition to counseling programs at its Hockessin center, Supporting Kidds offers outreach through grief education workshops for schools, hospitals and crisis teams. In January, it will again offer a trauma counseling program for students in sixth through ninth grades. Schools request the program, and Supporting Kidds serves as many as possible, Sklodowski says.
“They’re asking less for specific grief, but to help kids who have experienced so much trauma in their lives,” Sklodowski says. “Behavioral trauma includes sexual abuse, emotional abuse, domestic violence. Kids have seen shootings. For a lot of these kids, it’s multiples, not just one [form of abuse]. Then you throw in grief on top of that.”
Supporting Kidds operates with a barebones staff, but manages to reach about 100 children a year through its counseling and support groups and another 100 or so through its outreach programs to schools. With just two primary employees, Throckmorton and Sklodowski, therapist Nicole Smith and three clinical interns, all graduate students from Widener University and Neumann University, the organization hosts fundraising events and relies on a variety of government and private sector grants to facilitate support groups and therapy programs.
They work out of a frame house on Old Lancaster Pike in Hockessin that was purchased in 2005 following a successful fundraising campaign. The home was renovated so each room serves a dual purpose: one section is equipped with a desk and computer to function as an office space; cabinets along a wall hold supplies, and much of the space is kept open as a meeting area for groups of children.
Some health insurance companies cover the cost of Supporting Kidds’ services, but the organization will not turn anyone away because of limited resources, Throckmorton says. Events such as Sunday’s 5-K run and the Mustaches for Kidds fundraiser held each October generate revenues that help cover these costs, she says.
With its limited resources, Supporting Kidds must rely heavily on its energetic and committed volunteer facilitators.
“It’s one of the most important things I do. It’s challenging to sit in front of 7- and 8-year-olds who have lost a sibling or a parent and lead them to realize that at some point it’s going to be OK,” Hundley says. “I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.”