Reginald (Reggie) Riley, Ph.D., MSW
What type of grief services does Cornerstone Hospice provide to the community?
The grief process is a very difficult process to deal with; oftentimes people don’t realize that they’re grieving or that they’ve been bereaved. In the time after death, there’s a lot of support, there’s family in town, neighbors are bringing over food, church members are supporting, so it feels like you have that support that you need.
Oftentimes, if it were a death that was a surprise to them or a shock, they hadn’t prepared for that. With what we call anticipatory grief, when someone’s sick or there’s a prolonged illness, you have time to begin to prepare your mind for that grief and loss and start the beginning stages of grief.
What we do at Cornerstone is our grief and bereavement counseling services start with that anticipatory grief and when that person has transitioned or passed away, then our bereavement counselors become even more involved and provide support to those families for at least a year after their loved one’s death. We also provide individual and group therapy sessions.
We’re based here in Lake and Sumter counties. We have offices out of Leesburg, The Villages, Clermont and Tavares. Last year alone, we provided 1,200 community bereavement sessions to the Central Florida community.
We have relationships with the Lake and Sumter county school systems, where our children’s bereavement counselor can go into the school systems and provide sessions for children in the school setting, or they can come to our offices as outpatients.
Our children’s bereavement counselor also functions as our camp director for our children’s grief camp, Camp Bridges, held annually in Fruitland Park. Through working in the school systems, we’re able to identify kids who might benefit from that camp.
Different businesses will reach out and say, “Hey, we had a coworker pass away suddenly, it’s been a shock to the organization, we need some support.” So, we’ll send a bereavement counselor out to the business to do a celebration of life, do some storytelling and let people share their memories about that individual and talk about grief and talk about loss.
And in the spiritual community, we work closely with churches when a member of the church passes away or a pastor passes away or something suddenly happens. We’re able to go in and provide that support to them.
For more Information
Reginald (Reggie) Riley, Ph.D., MSW
Director of Psychosocial Services
Cornerstone Hospice & Palliative Care Inc.
866.742.6655
cornerstonehospice.org
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