Hospice Support Groups

What is Spiritual Care?

Spiritual Care seeks to enable a person to become emotionally whole by facing their illness with humor, love and compassion. Every illness creates spiritual questions. Who am I? Who am I becoming? What will happen to my loved ones when I am gone? How can I find peace in my heart? If only I had done…?

Spiritual Care moves the individual toward spiritual health by allowing them to speak their own words and thoughts. Wisdom is therefore achieved as the person integrates their heart and mind. By doing this self-care, a person will emotionally heal, and reconnect to their social environment finding new ways to live well.

Our support groups are offered free of charge to the community.

The following services require pre-registration:

Adult Bereavement Support Group
Stepping Stones through Grief

 

VNA Hospice Bereavement Services
Death can be a painful and permanent loss experience, and one of the hardest from which to recover. Death takes away, but facing it and grieving can result in peace, new strengths and purpose.   Click here to learn more...

Adult Bereavement Support Groups

The groups will help explore and understand better the grief process and how to celebrate and honor the loved ones we have lost. The groups meet weekly for 8 weeks and are held several times throughout the year. These groups are held one night/week on weekday evenings from 6p-8p.  If you are interested in attending our next group, please register and you will be notified for our next session.
Pre-Registration is required.

Suicide Bereavement Individual or Group Support

Individual sessions are available to assist participants in assessing their needs and working through some of the difficult issues associated with losing a loved one to suicide. Our ongoing Suicide Bereavement Support Group meets every Thursday from 6p-7:30p.  Participation in this support group is open to adults and although registration for this group is not required, we do ask interested persons to contact 663-4005 prior to attending.  This group will meet ongoing and will follow a 10 week cyclical agenda which provides the flexibility for participants to discuss current topics/issues of concern.

Stepping Stones through Grief

A bereavement group for children and adolescents ages 5-18. The groups will help explore and better understand such topics as the meaning of death, the feelings generated around loss and how to celebrate and honor the loved ones we have lost. Parents are required to stay and support their children by attending their own adult support group.  The groups meet weekly for 8 weeks. Stepping-Stones is held twice a year in the spring and fall.

The group meets from 6pm-7:30pm.  (Pre-registration is required and applicants will be notified by the facilitators prior to the start of the session.  The group will meet at the Elliot Day Care Center, 435 S. Main Street in Manchester.)

Memorial Service-A Celebration of Remembrance

Memorial Services are held two times/year to honor and celebrate the lives of those people we love who have died. They are open to the public and provide unique opportunities of remembrance.

Men's Breakfast

A support group serving a light breakfast open to all men whose spouse has died. There is no registration or fee to attend this group. The Men's Breakfast meets at the 200 South Jewett St., in a room of the Southside Bible Fellowship Church, on the fourth Friday of every month between the hours of 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM.

Women’s Support Group

Two support group sessions: one serving a light breakfast on the 2nd Friday of the month from 9:30-11:00 am and one in the afternoon on the 4th Friday of the month from 1:00-2:30pm. These are open to all women whose spouse or loved one has died. There is no registration or fee to attend. This group meets at the Elliot at River's Edge, at 185 Queen City Avenue, Manchester, in the River Room on the second floor.