What to Include in a DSP Grief Training Curriculum

A direct support professional (DSP) grief training curriculum needs six content areas, in this order: language (drop the euphemisms and use "death" and "died"), how adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) grieve, nuanced grief responses (including the "easy client" trap), memorial activities like rice paper messages floated in a river, the no-timeline rule, and staff self-care. This page is the checklist for the training binder. It assumes you already know grief support matters. It tells you what goes on each slide.

You can build this in one full day, or you can split it across a week with short daily sessions. Both formats raise staff confidence and knowledge. Pick the one your day hab or group home schedule can actually carry.

Block 1: Using the word "death" instead of euphemisms#

Start here. The first slide of the training is the word list.

Cut these from staff vocabulary: "passed away," "lost," "went to a better place," "went to sleep," "we lost him." Replace them with "died" and "death." For clients with autism or IDD, the soft phrases are confusing. "Lost" sounds like the person can be found. "Went to sleep" gets a client scared to go to bed. "Better place" raises a question about where that place is and how to get there.

I use the D word, I use the word death and dying, and this is very intentional. The research shows that if we're using euphemisms like passed away or lost, or went to a better place, when we're talking about death, this can be really confusing for people with autism and intellectual disabilities. From the talk — Tricia Lund

Run a five-minute drill. Staff say "his dad died" out loud. Then they say it again. The discomfort fades with reps. Clients pick up on that discomfort. If the staff member flinches, the client knows the topic is unsafe.

This block runs about fifteen minutes. The handout is a one-page swap sheet: "say this, not that."

Block 2: How adults with IDD grieve differently (and how they grieve the same)#

Block 2 is the myth-busting block. Until the 1980s, the field assumed people with IDD did not grieve because they could not understand death. Research has since shown that they do grieve. They feel the loss. They notice the empty chair.

Some grief looks the same as it does for anyone. Crying. Sadness. Sleep changes. Some grief looks different. A nonspeaking client may grieve through a behavior change that staff would never label as grief. A client in a wheelchair with complex medical needs may grieve through sleeping more or refusing food. A client at a four-year-old cognitive level may ask "where's dad?" thirty times in one afternoon. That is the grief. That is them checking. They are working through that the person is not coming back.

Cover this in twenty minutes. Use two or three short case sketches. Real ones from your day hab work better than textbook ones.

Block 3: Spotting nuanced grief responses, including the "easy client"#

Most staff training focuses on big behaviors. Property destruction. Aggression. Elopement. Those are easy to see. Block 3 covers the grief responses staff miss.

The big one is what Lund calls the "easy client" trap. A client who used to push back at requests is suddenly compliant. They sit quietly through the cooking class. They go to bed without protest. Staff feel relief. Staff should feel concerned.

Staff may not notice more nuanced behaviors. Like, they're more compliant than they ever used to be. Right. Someone is grieving. Well, when they turn into the easy person for us to deal with when the reality is that easy person for you to deal with is grieving and we're not supporting them in their grief. From the talk — Tricia Lund

Other nuanced responses to cover:

• New body complaints. Sudden talk of stomach aches, headaches, or back pain that has no clear medical cause. Grief shows up in the body.
• Sleep shifts. Sleeping more, sleeping less, waking at the same hour every night.
• Repeated questions. "Where's mom?" asked over and over is grief processing, not a memory issue.
• Withdrawal that looks like calm. Pulling away from group activities. Not asking for preferred items anymore.

The handout is a one-page screener. Staff check off any change they have seen in the last thirty days. The screener is for noticing, not diagnosing.

This block needs at least thirty minutes. Give staff time to share clients they are now thinking about differently.

Block 4: Memorial activities and continuing bonds#

Block 4 is the most copyable part of the curriculum. Staff leave with three or four activities they can run by Friday.

The research on continuing bonds is clear: keeping a connection to the person who died helps the grief process. Cutting the connection makes it harder. Yet staff often do the opposite. They remove pictures. They pack up the gifts the person gave. They steer the client off the topic. They mean well. They think they are protecting the client from sadness. They are removing the tools the client needs.

We make a pillow out of their old t-shirt. We have a little candle that we light. I have rice paper that my clients have written down little messages and we put it in the river and it like, it doesn't evaporate, but it like dissolves. From the talk — Tricia Lund

Pack the training binder with low-cost ideas:

• A pillow sewn from the person's old t-shirt.
• A small candle the client lights at the same time each week.
• Rice paper messages floated on a river or stream. The paper dissolves. No litter.
• A photo of the person kept in the client's room or carried in a wallet.
• A short story the client tells the staff at dinner: "Tell me about your aunt."

Each activity is low-stakes, repeatable, and does not need a therapist on site. Run this block in twenty-five minutes. End with staff picking one activity to try with a current client.

Block 5: Anniversaries and the no-timeline rule#

Block 5 fixes a sentence that gets said in every group home and day hab: "His mom died three years ago. He should be over it."

The training has to undo that sentence.

I have her staff say, okay, but his mom died three years ago. He should be over it. Should he though? Should he be over it? I, I don't think so. So again, talking about this idea of a timeline and that there's not a timeline. From the talk — Tricia Lund

The rule: there is no timeline. A client can be sad about a death three years out, ten years out, twenty years out. That sadness is not a relapse. It is not a problem to solve. It is normal.

Cover anniversaries here too. The week of the death date. The dead person's birthday. Mother's Day. Father's Day. The first big holiday after the death. Holidays where the family used to gather. Staff should mark these dates on the client's calendar so they are not surprised by a grief burst on a Tuesday in October.

This block is the unlearning block. Plan twenty minutes. Plan to repeat it in supervision.

Block 6: Staff self-care and the grief staff carry into work#

Block 6 looks at the staff. This is not a soft add-on. It is load-bearing.

Day hab and group home staff work in rooms where roommates die, day program peers die, caregivers die. They sit with the same client through three losses in two years. They also bring their own grief into the building. The aunt who died last spring. The miscarriage. The friend lost to overdose. Staff are asked to hold space for client grief while their own grief sits unprocessed.

Cover four things in this block:

• The grief staff carry to work. Name it. Normalize it. Do not require them to talk about it.
• What support the organization offers. Bereavement leave. Flex hours. A therapist on call. Whether a client death counts toward leave.
• Self-care that is not a bubble bath. Sleep, eating, asking a co-worker to take a shift, leaving on time.
• The compassion punishment problem. When a staff member sits with a crying client for ten minutes and then forgets to clock out, gets behind on meds, or misses documentation, they get coached. The training has to flag this for supervisors. Compassion that gets punished does not get repeated.

This block runs fifteen minutes. Close the day with it. Send staff home with a one-page list of internal and external supports.

Frequently asked questions#

How long should each block of a DSP grief training run? For a one-day format, plan a six-hour training: Block 1 fifteen minutes, Block 2 twenty minutes, Block 3 thirty minutes, Block 4 twenty-five minutes, Block 5 twenty minutes, Block 6 fifteen minutes, plus breaks, case discussion, and a closing question round. For a split format, run one block per day across six days, twenty to forty minutes each, during a paid shift overlap.

What handouts or visuals should accompany the training? Five one-page handouts: the "say this, not that" swap sheet for Block 1, the nuanced response screener for Block 3, the memorial activity menu for Block 4, an anniversary calendar template for Block 5, and the staff support resource list for Block 6. Add a reference list of articles from Omega, the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, and the Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities for staff who want to read further.

Should the curriculum be different for day hab versus residential staff? The six blocks stay the same. The case examples shift. Day hab staff see clients for six to eight hours and hand them off. Residential staff see clients through bedtime, anniversaries, and the first morning back from a funeral. Build two case sketches per block, one day hab and one residential. Run the training in mixed groups when you can. They learn from each other.

If you are training staff this quarter, watch the full CEU first. Lund walks through the research that backs each block, the barriers organizations push back with, and the autonomy-focused mindset shift that holds the curriculum together. The training will be better for it.