Caring Through Loss: Supporting Grieving Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Caring Through Loss:
Supporting Grieving Children with Intellectual Disabilities

DATE: Tuesday, December 2, 2025, 2:00 pm ET

Presenter: Arlen Gaines, PhD, MSW, LCSW-C, APHSW-C

Please join us for a webinar exploring how children with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience grief and bereavement—an often overlooked topic in research and practice. Designed for professionals, educators, families, and volunteers, this session will present key findings from a recent study and introduce the Caring Connections model, a new framework for developmentally inclusive grief support.

 Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how children with ID, including those with different communication styles, cope with loss, and come away with practical, evidence-based tools for grief support.

Registration

Dr. Arlen Gaines is the Director of Social Work for palliative care at MedStar Health. She has extensive experience leading psychosocial teams in supporting individuals with serious illnesses and their families. Over nearly two decades of clinical practice, Dr. Gaines developed a specialized focus on supporting individuals with developmental disabilities in their grief and speaks nationally on this subject. She is the co-author of the award-winning I Have a Question series, which helps children, including those with developmental disabilities, understand complex topics like death and cancer. She earned her doctorate in palliative care from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where she focused her research on the grief and bereavement experiences of children with intellectual disabilities.