This qualitative study explores social work students’ experiences of grief and loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. Key findings highlight students’ experiences of constant adaptation and pervasive loss and emphasize the need for trauma-informed, resilience-focused, and equity driven approaches in social work education to support students during crises.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this session, attendees should be able to:
Analyze how social work students experienced and navigated grief, loss, and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Examine and expand concepts of loss to include pervasive loss, the experience of multiple concurrent, ongoing losses that pervaded the pandemic experience.
Develop trauma-informed educational strategies that acknowledge the impact of non-death losses on students’ experiences and support well-being in social work education.
