On Wednesday, April 26, Hospice & Palliative Care of Westchester will join more than 2,400 organizations across the United States and Canada as a local host for the Hospice Foundation of America’s seventh annual National Bereavement Teleconference. "Living with Grief: Children, Adolescents, and Loss", a live-via-satellite video teleconference, will focus on ways to help children and adolescents cope with loss. The program will offer insight and practical suggestions for those assisting young people with issues that include death, serious illness, divorce, and other traumatic incidents.

Last year’s teleconference was seen by more than 150,000 people in over 2,400 communities.

"While we often discuss how we grieve as adults, rarely do we consider the losses that children and adolescents must face,” said Jack D. Gordon, President of the Hospice Foundation of America. “Whether they are grieving the death of a parent or grandparent, or they must face the loss involved in re-location or divorce, children and adolescents often do not know how to cope."

Hospice & Palliative Care of Westchester officials want the teleconference to help those who deal with children. “It will highlight interventive techniques that caring adults can use to empower children and adolescents with effective coping skills,” said George Batten, Executive Director of Hospice & Palliative Care of Westchester.

The two-and-one-half-hour panel discussion will be moderated by Cokie Roberts of ABC News and feature a distinguished panel of experts. The panel will include

• Nancy Boyd Webb, DSW, BCD, RPT-S, a social worker and expert on play therapy for bereaved children
• Charles Corr, PhD, professor and author who has written extensively on children, adolescents, and grief
• Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, Lutheran minister and professor of gerontology at the College of New Rochelle
• Margarita Suarez, RN, PNP, MA, a pediatric nurse, former school teacher, and Executive Director of AVANTA in Washington state.
• Dottie Ward-Wimmer, a pediatric nurse and children’s bereavement counselor with the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing in Washington, DC
• Betsy Wendt, a counselor with the D.C. Public School System will join the panel for a discussion on intervention.

Supported by:

• Hospice Foundation of America, a non-profit organization that assists those who cope either personally or professionally with terminal illness, death, grief and bereavement.
• In part by a grant from the Project on Death in America of the Open Society Institute and the Veterans Health Administration Office of Information, Department of Veterans Affairs
• Produced in cooperation with Annenberg/CPB, funder of “Death: A Personal Understanding,”
• and by the John Hancock Corporation.