PARENT GUIDANCE PREVENTION PROGRAM FOR BEREAVED CHILDREN

The proposed study will evaluate a primary prevention program for children aged 7-16 facing the death of a parent from cancer. The principal goal of the program is to maintain the competence of children 7-16 following parental death by facilitating mourning and preventing maladaptation to the loss. This will be accomplished through enhancing the surviving parents' capacity to promote the conditions that will facilitate the children's necessary grief work and successful resolution of the loss. The program adopts a parent guidance model which relies on indirect targeting of the children through intervention with their well parent. It consists of a pre- and post-death component in which family members meet with a social worker approximately sixteen times over a ten month period starting about six months before the death, and ending about four months after the loss. The study employs a true experimental design with 110 families randomly assigned to the Treatment Group and 110 to the Control Group. Group differences in children's functioning will be assessed 7 and 14 months following the death. The specific aims of the research are: 1. To determine if Treatment Group children are able to maintain better competence in the face of the parental death than Control Group children. 2. To evaluate the relative efficacy of the program for high and low risk families. 3. To develop a training manual so that the program can be replicated my mental health professionals in other settings.