York County Medicine Fall 2021 - 28

YORKCOMEDSOC.ORG
IN THE NEWS:
Supporting
Bereavement During
a Global Pandemic
" What do you mean you want to talk to children about
death? " When Olivia's House founder Leslie Delp first saw a
need for children's bereavement support in the mid-1990s, she
was met with skepticism and confusion. A visionary, Leslie knew
that our society was moving toward a place of understanding that
bereavement, grief, and loss are all part of our mental wellness,
and that we, as professionals, would need to spearhead the
education of the community. And thus, Olivia's House was born.
For the past two decades, Olivia's House has been the premier
grief and loss center in Central Pennsylvania. As a free-standing,
independent non-profit organization, we are fully able to meet
the bereavement-related needs of the community, whatever they
may be. With a mixture of education from our clinical staff,
access to our grief and loss lending library (the largest of its kind
on the east coast), referrals to adjunctive specialists if needed,
and our in-house peer support education programs, there is truly
something to benefit anyone who reaches out to our mission for
support. For over 20 years, our system was working smoothly . . .
and then COVID-19 hit.
In March of 2020, Olivia's House was two weeks into our
eight-week peer-support education program named Hearts Can
Heal. We were hosting the largest group of families we had ever
seen, expanding into our Rice Family Foundation Workshop to
hold our parent group so that all could fit comfortably, when
news of a pandemic trickled onto our radar. Our team jumped
into action, planning ways to navigate our favorite closing
program ritual, in which participants hold hands in a ring as
we " pass the squeeze " around the circle. It seems naïve now, but
at the time, the world was focused more on alternatives to a
traditional handshake than on complete social distancing.
As time went on, it seemed that every time we put a plan
in place, the guidelines became stricter, eventually eliminating
our ability to host an in-person program altogether. But was
Olivia's House going to fade into the background and wait out
the pandemic until we could resume our tried-and-true services
again? Not a chance. Our small but mighty team sprang into
action.
Within two weeks, the program team at Olivia's House had
completely reconfigured our services in a way that would not
only make sense in a virtual space, but also benefit the families
that we serve. As technology advanced around us, we utilized the
safest software to transfer our peer support educational programs
into a virtual realm.
We took a risk, since our mission was built upon the
foundation of bringing families together, and now we were being
required to stay apart. This required extra attention to the many
details that comprise Hearts Can Heal and Little Ones programs,
so that our families would still know they were cared for and
had a strong safety net underneath them. Thus, our virtual
programs were born and have proven so successful that we hope
to incorporate this element into our future programming as well,
long after the memory of the pandemic is behind us.
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York County Medicine | FALL 2021
http://www.YORKCOMEDSOC.ORG
York County Medicine Fall 2021

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