We are a small but mighty group of individuals with lived experience in grief and loss. We envision a world where grief is talked about openly and support is readily available.
Peer Support Community Partners’ mission is to help establish and sustain peer grief support as an effective field of practice integral to every community’s response to grieving people after someone dies.
All programs have their basis in the RIVER model of peer grief support (Relate, Invite, Validate, Empower, Reassure). Program development is guided by best practices in peer grief support.
Peer Support Community Partners’ vision is to change the culture of grief support in the United States.
Peer Grief Support as an Effective Field of Practice
To accomplish this, we apply the following best practices to peer grief support:
Participant-Led Program Design. Those we serve have meaningful roles in program development, implementation, quality assurance, and dissemination.
Integral Community-Building. Programs employ processes and activities that establish and strengthen a sense of community among bereaved people. This empowers members with shared needs to help one another cope with the tragedy of losing someone they care about. They are nurtured as a community through meaningful, ongoing engagement, interactions, communications, and activities with each other and project staff.
Trauma-Informed Practices. Programs account for participants’ possible trauma exposure; activities avoid re-traumatization; staff are able to deliver basic assistance and, when necessary, make a referral to a higher level of care.
Person-Centered Care. All programs recognize each participant as an individual, whose unique experience of loss carries specific needs for coping with grief. Each griever is valued as an expert in their own experience, and the sole authority on the choices to be made and the actions to be taken in response to their grief.
Cultural Humility. All programs recognize that each worker and each individual served has their own beliefs and a variety of cultural identities, all of which impact their personal grief experience. Nobody is an expert in anybody else’s culture or the impact their culture has on their grief experience. Rather, everyone keeps an open mind, curiosity, and willingness to learn from one another. Differing cultural beliefs and practices must be respected and held paramount in the peer grief support process.
Self-Care, Resilience, and Healing. Supportive practices for self-care, healing, personal growth, self-compassion, and resilience are woven into training and activities for peer helpers, service providers, and participants.
PSCP builds grief support programs, policies, and systems which are peer-based and trauma-informed. These initiatives focus on a nondirective approach, do not pathologize grief, and can be integrated into existing systems.
