ABSTRACT
This chapter expands N. B. Webb's tripartite model for assessing grief and loss in children, adolescents, and, their families and resources that can assist in the assessment process. Loss and death are part of the human condition. Every day, children and teens will experience the death of family, friends, or pets. They will also undergo myriad nonfinite losses, such as saying good-bye to friends, a school, or neighborhood when a family relocates; temporary or chronic loss of health when sick or injured; loss of family structure as they have known it when parents divorce; or loss of safety when abused or bullied. There is lively discourse among researchers and clinicians about what constitutes “maladaptive,” or atypical, grief in children. Assessors meeting bereaved youth should consider their therapeutic use of self, means of assessing the client and his or her family, and use of language.
