Tools for Many Trades: Reaffirming the Use of Grief Counselling by Health, Welfare and Pastoral Workers

The use of counselling is increasingly questioned as an appropriate and viable activity for professionals in statutory and general settings whose work roles and tasks are varied. This paper looks specifically at grief counselling and examines some of the reasons why applications of grief theories and grief counselling by such workers have been narrow and limited. It then suggests a framework for teaching the subject, offering relevant applications. Finally, it points to developing areas of grief counselling in multi-disciplinary contexts and argues that working with grief and loss must be recognised and fostered as core, generic skills for the non-specialist.