Jefferson Health - Abington provides peer support groups for grieving children, teens, and adults in Pennsylvania along with Camp Charlie through their Safe Harbor program.

Camp Charlie

Camp Charlie is a week-long day camp for bereaved children ages six (must be in or have completed 1st grade) to 12 held in June. Staff, volunteer facilitators and teen buddies lead campers through a week of healing and fun. Activities and challenges are used to guide and enhance the healing process for both campers and buddies. Art is used to memorialize, drama/movement to tell the story, and music and song writing to say goodbye. Click here to learn more about Camp Charlie. 

Support Groups

Safe Harbor provides a safe place to be with others who are grieving the death of loved ones. The program offers group support for children, adolescents, teens and their parents or guardians who are grieving the death of a sibling, a parent, a primary caregiver or a peer. Safe Harbor provides every-other-week peer support groups designed to support family members of various ages during the bereavement time.

• Children and adolescents meet separately for 1½  hours every other week.  These support groups consist of children who have experienced the death of a parent, guardian, sibling or friend. Our children’s groups include talking circles and time for unstructured play activities. Play is a very important part of grief work for the children. They express their grieving through the powerful language of creative play. Children choose where they will play and what they want to do. Their play opportunities will include an art room, puppet theater, sand tray, music, pretend play, etc. Pet Therapy will be available for interested children. To assure their safety, a volunteer facilitator or staff person always supervises them.
• Teens meet every other week for 1½ hours.  This support group consists of teens who have experienced the death of a parent, sibling, guardian or friend.  Our teen groups are structured to provide time to discuss issues with peers and trained facilitators.  Teens can choose to talk or engage in other unstructured activities such as art, music, foosball, air hockey, etc.  Pet Therapy will be available to interested teens.  For safety reasons they are always with a trained facilitator or staff member.
• Safe Harbor offers adult support groups, which meet at the same time as the children and teen groups.  These support groups provide an opportunity for the adults to meet with other adults to discuss concerns about parenting grieving children and teens.  Parents will be given an opportunity to share their own experiences of grief and provide mutual support.  Safe Harbor highly recommends that the parent/caregiver attend this group.

Getting Started…

Call 215-481-5983 or email us for more information. Please watch this video (password SH2020!!) prior to contacting us regarding enrollment in the program.