Janine Rochwite deals with grief and loss on a daily basis. As a licensed professional counselor at Aurora Psychiatric Hospital in Wauwatosa, she sees patients who have lost parents, siblings, jobs, self-esteem and self-control.
But nothing prepared her for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Grief Support Specialist Certificate Program, which became part of the Continuing Studies division last fall. The five-day cohort program — the first of its kind at a major university in the United States — is designed to equip counselors, clergy members, coaches, teachers and health care professionals with the necessary counseling tools to help people heal in the midst of death, divorce, addiction and other emotional trauma.
Four instructors oversee four daylong classes, and participants reconvene one month later to present a final paper or project. Classes for this fall’s session run Sept. 10-13, with final presentations slated for Oct. 10.
“I wanted to be better trained to come alongside patients in their journey and help them move forward,” Rochwite says. “I have my own personal grief journey — the deaths of my mother and my 57-year-old sister — which inspired me to seek this certificate. The actual time together as a cohort, on the UW-Madison campus, was life changing. The stories, connections and training I received made me come away a changed person.”
Upon receiving grief support specialist status from the UW, Rochwite partnered with a mental health clinic in West Bend, where she offers her own grief counseling services and works with area churches and funeral homes to grow her practice.
Locally, Deb Farrar-Simpson, a social worker and positive behavior support coach at La Follette High School, and Jennifer Tomlinson, a special education teacher and interventionist at Rusch Elementary School in Portage, attended the grief support program together and developed the idea for Camp RAIN (Resilient Adolescents Inspiring Newness) — a day camp for children who have experienced the death of someone close to them. (They’re now seeking funding.)
The Grief Support Specialist Certificate Program was developed by Douglas Smith, a trainer and consultant with more than 25 years of experience as a counselor, therapist and health care administrator in hospitals, hospice and social services environments.
Smith previously led a handful of one-day workshops on grief at the UW, based on a training program he gives at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He and UW’s Barbara Nehls-Lowe worked together to convince university officials that a certificate program in this subject would be a vital addition to the continuing studies curriculum.
Nehls-Lowe, now director of the grief support program, had a younger sister die as a child in the 1960s: “Back then, there were no bereavement specialists. This program feels like a gift of legacy for my sister and my parents.”
For purposes of the program, “grief” is defined as much more than “death.” The term represents an undergoing of change, and therefore also can involve job loss, aging of parents, onset of dementia, surviving rape, self-esteem issues or a missing child.
“From the first lecture, we set the mood that there are going to be some emotions shared,” Smith explains. “How can we ask others to share with us if we’re not willing to share with others?”
Isaiah Brokenleg works as an epidemiologist for the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center in Lac du Flambeau, which strives to improve the health of 34 tribal communities. He took the course specifically to help Native Americans cope with what he calls “historical trauma.”
“People are like, ‘Why don’t the Indians just get over it?’” Brokenleg says, referring to the conflicts, discrimination and racism that tribes have faced throughout U.S. history. “Non-death grief and loss is even greater than death-related grief and loss.”
Class sizes range from 30 to 40 students, some from as far away as North Carolina, San Francisco and Hong Kong. The program provides 3.5 continuing education units. Prerequisites include a bachelor’s degree in a health care or counseling field and/or employment in a health care or counseling setting.
The cost of the program ($1,500 to $1,800), its intense nature and overnight stays can be drawbacks for some participants, so it will also be offered as an online training course beginning in 2016.
“We’re always looking for areas in which we can help make a difference, and this is one of those areas,” says Jeffrey Russell, dean of UW’s Continuing Studies division. “This is the Wisconsin Idea in action — creating something useful and relevant that makes an impact.”