Inventory of Youth Adaptation to Loss (IYAL): Opportunities & Challenges

Jennifer Kaplan, PhD, LICSW, FT was awarded the second annual Excellence in Service Award at the 2018 Symposium for the National Alliance for Grieving Children for her professional contributions in research and practice on a national level in the field of childhood bereavement. She is Founding Director for Jeff’s Place Children’s Bereavement Center, Inc., based in Framingham and serving greater MetroWest and beyond, FRIENDS WAY in Rhode Island, and Founding Clinical Director Experience Camps, weeklong overnight camps for grieving boys and girls across the USA. Dr. Kaplan has worked extensively with bereaved children, teens and families in various settings over the past 25 years providing counseling, professional training and education, and crisis response. Jennifer’s publications include: You Are Not Alone: Young Adults Coping With Death, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles. She is a graduate of Simmons College School of Social Work in Boston, where she teaches as an adjunct faculty member. Jennifer’s dissertation was testing the psychometric properties of the Inventory of Youth Adaptation to Loss (IYAL), an outcome instrument she developed through the support and collaboration of many children’s bereavement programs around the country and Canada. The Inventory of Youth Adaptation to Loss (IYAL) was developed to understand the feelings and social supports experienced by bereaved youth to develop an evidence-base for bereavement interventions. Dr. Kaplan is currently seeking a partnership with a research partner to have the IYAL accessible to children’s bereavement programs everywhere as a resource to further research and best evidence practices, as well as to impact public policy change so that prevention programs like Jeff’s Place are sustainable.