Lysa Toye helps children work through their grief. She ensures that they don’t have to carry the weight of their fears and feelings alone.

“There isn’t a lot of help and support for grieving people, especially children, in the community,” says Toye, Counsellor, Max and Beatrice Wolfe Centre for Children’s Grief and Palliative Care of Mount Sinai Hospital, one of three counsellors at the Centre.

“In a society that is so uncomfortable with death and grief, our team gives children permission to grieve and we reassure them they are not alone in their pain. We provide these children with strategies to live with the enormity of their feelings.”

The children’s grief and palliative care program started two-and-half years ago at Mount Sinai and is the most well-developed and extensive grief counselling program for children in Toronto and among very few in Canada. The counsellors care for children and families at Mount Sinai and in the Greater Toronto Area community.

“Every child and family is different,” explains Toye, “and our team doesn’t have one approach to help children and families through their grief and bereavement. What remains consistent is that we believe death and grief are natural life events, so we want to support families by teaching children and families the language to express their feelings so they can grieve together.

The work we do is hard – we see a lot of people in a lot of pain and suffering. Our ultimate goal is to remove the stigma of death and grief so that we’re not the only ones who can talk to children about death and support them.”