Grieving for the parent death in childhood and social work. A developmental perspective

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is the analysis of the specificity of grieving process for parent death in childhood and the relationship between coping strategies and the cognitive and emotional development. The purpose will be to design effective assessments and interventions from Social Work, while this discipline deals with vulnerability and risk both individually or family and communitarian levels. Because the novelty of the topic from this point of view in our country, it has conducted a review in national databases in order to detect its current scope in the literature of our environment. The results highlight the paucity of documents in our field of knowledge, meanwhile the majority of works were focused on psychology perspective and published as information guide for families or professionals. It is noted the emphasis in the relevance of age and its correlation with cognitive acquisitions, especially since Piagetian models, when the needs of minors have to be covered in this life situation, especially to provide them information about the loss; and on the greater effectiveness of the intervention with the surviving parent or other family members than those with the child himself. It indicates that a proper accomplishment of the tasks of the grieving process contributes to the acquisition of new coping skills and preventing alterations in the later development.