preview

Essay on HNC Social Care Grief & Loss

Good Essays

Supporting Individuals Experiencing Loss and Grief.

Grief is a natural response to a major loss, though often deeply painful and can have a negative impact on your life. Any loss can cause varied levels of grief often when someone least expects it however, loss is widely varied and is often only perceived as death. Tugendhat (2005) argued that losses such as infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, adoption and divorce can cause grief in everyday life. Throughout our lives we all face loss in one way or another, whether it is being diagnosed with a terminal illness, loss of independence due to a serious accident or illness, gaining a criminal record (identity loss), losing our job, home or ending a relationship; we all experience loss …show more content…

Reconstruction & Working Through: As a person starts to become more functional, realistic solutions seem possible for life after the loss.
Acceptance & Hope: The last stage – a person learns to accept and deal with the reality of their situation. A person is more future-oriented and learns to cope.
(Wright, J. 2011)

During the time I have been employed within social care I have worked in conjunction with various organisations who offer support to individuals experiencing grief and loss. Victim Support Scotland is an organisation I have recently referred one of my cases to who has suffered a loss. My service users father was subsequently murdered following a drug related crime, the incident was reported on nationally and images were published on the internet and papers. My service user (who I will name as Ben for the purposes of confidentiality) is a 14 year old male, he maintained a close relationship with his father albeit did not live in the same house as him due to his parents divorcing. Following the death, Ben appeared to pursue his life as normal and at no point showed any emotion for his loss. However, 5 weeks later his mother informed me that Ben began to spend much of his time researching his father's name using Google and started to keep his father's belongings in his bedroom. He started to become increasingly emotional stating he didn't understand how his father died and on several occasions left school to return home.

Get Access