PRESENTER: Jill Johnson-Young, LCSW

Course meets the qualifications for 2 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.  Registrants must attend the full 2 hours to receive credit.

CONTENT DESCRIPTION:

Do you know all that is involved in Intimate Partner Loss (IPL)?

This is a subject that is not well recognized by most providers in the helping professions, including the hospice staff you may assume are helping your clients as you support one client facing a loss. "We" -they don’t say the words- all the words, the uncomfortable words;  then few others will. It is not included in  school programs. Death and dying and grief are not sexy topics; as one professional told me recently during an international symposium.

Your clients who have lost or are losing an intimate partner are facing a loss of great intensity that is almost never named. Take a moment to reflect- have you ever asked a client who lost a partner what it was like to miss being intimate? Or to consider intimacy with someone new after a death?

You may not, but I can guarantee your client is thinking about it and not bringing it up because they think you will think they are weird. ..And they may fear you are going to hit them with the Widow Rules and create shame around a real need and experience. There is research (although not a lot- this is a touchy subject!) that demonstrates that as a profession we do not address these needs and do not bring them up. The same research demonstrates that our clients wish we would address it, and that by not doing so we are not helping them complete their grief work, or to talk through their fears of the future.

This course is interactive, engaging, and will provide skills you can immediately apply in assessments with clients to look for hidden losses, language to use to bring up topics that might challenge you as a therapist, and provide care your client is looking for but unwilling or uncomfortable with sharing.

Goals

1. Attendees will be able to understand and be able to discuss the dying process knowledgeably, to provide education for clients, and why that is important in grief work.

2. Attendees will be prepared to compare and contrast the stages of anticipatory grief with the grieving process and what the IP expecting loss may have accomplished prior to the death that changes the trajectory of grief.

Objectives

1. Attendees will be able to utilize the client story to hear unnamed intimacy losses - and to name and address them in the clinical assessment.

2. Attendees will be able to understand and name five holistic needs of clients coping with grief after IP loss.

3. Attendees will be able to name four kinds of ADC’s (after death contacts) that are expected by the majority of IP loss survivors.

4. Attendees will be able to name the special considerations of IP loss survivors regarding attending support groups, especially hospice provided groups.

About the Presenter

Jill Johnson-Young, LCSW is the co-founder and CEO of Central Counseling Services in Riverside and Murrieta. She graduated from UC Riverside (BA 1987) and the University of South Florida (MSW, 1997). Jill specializes in grief and loss, dementia, and end of life, and is an international speaker in those areas. One of her lifetime career goals is to change the conversation about grief, to make preparing for the death of a loved one productive time to say goodbye, to make grief a time to reorganize and move into a recreated life - not to continue the construct of grieving is forever, which is not physically or emotionally healthy.  Jill’s career has included being the first social worker for the Inland AIDS Project, the Director of Client services for Riverside Area Rape Crisis, close to two decades in child welfare and adoptions, and spending more than a decade with hospice as a medical social worker and as director of social workers, chaplains, and grief staff. She has published several books for children and adults about grief. Jill hosts a weekly Grief Chat with a Debra Joy Hart, RN, on Humor, Grace and Grief on Facebook Live. She also co-facilitates a monthly dementia support group in the community with Ilse Aerts. Jill speaks into grief from both professional training and from being widowed twice.  She takes breaks from grief with her five rescued senior Oodles, her garden, and finding unique places to metal detect with her wife.

Inland Empire Chapter of CAMFT is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCS, AND/or LEPs. IE-CAMFT maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. CE Provider # 62278

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