Uplift Center for Grieving Children

Uplift Center for Grieving Children's (Uplift) mission is to help Children Grieving a death heal and grow through their grief, while strengthening families, communities and professionals' understanding of how best to respond to their needs. Now in its 25th year of operations, Uplift was established in 1995 as part of the bereavement program at st. christopher's hospital. Recognizing a growing need for high-quality, free grief services in philadelphia, the program incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 2000. Since that time, Uplift has grown from offering a handful of support groups to providing a suite of grief and mental health support services, including in-school grief groups in more than 125 public, charter, and parochial schools across the city, family services programming supporting youth alongside their caregivers, as well as caregiver-only support and skills-building services; acute-loss supports for schools and communities following the death of a student or other school community member; specialized grief supports for spanish-speakers, lgbtqia+ youth, and justice-involved students; training programs for front-line professionals to create more trauma-informed and grief-sensitive communities; and the philly hopeline, a free telephone helpline staffed by Uplift's masters- level clinicians, offering immediate support for students and caregivers experiencing grief, stress, anxiety, or other stressors. Over the 2023-2024 program year, Uplift supported nearly 5,000 youth, caregivers, school community members, and front-line professionals across its programs.