Residential Youth Workers’ Perceptions of Grief and Loss in Residential Care

ABSTRACT

Youth in residential care typically experience significant losses during their childhood, which often result in grief. The presence of supportive adults who acknowledge these losses has been found to be a significant protective factor for youth in residential care. Residential youth workers consistently interact with the children they support; thus, they have a unique opportunity to address children’s losses and associated grief. This project uses a mixed methods design to explore how residential youth workers conceptualize and account for grief and loss. Specifically, we explore service providers’ perceptions of how loss affects children’s behavior. Three narrative vignettes describing a hypothetical child’s behavior were used to elicit these opinions. Residential youth workers (n = 101) were recruited from British Columbia to complete a brief questionnaire that assessed their perceptions of behaviors they encounter and their experiences supporting grieving youth. A one-way ANOVA revealed no statistically significant group differences; however, a thematic analysis revealed that while grief and loss are often accounted for, participants feel under-resourced to provide grief-informed care to a population experiencing complex losses. The findings suggest that clinical and policy changes are necessary to better support residential youth workers and the youth they care for.

KEYWORDS:

• Grief
• residential care
• non-finite loss
• child welfare
• externalizing behaviors

Acknowledgments

We would like to sincerely thank our funders and community partners at British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth. We’re grateful for your time, insights, and feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth under Grant [F22-01721].