Family Support
FAMILY SUPPORT GROUPS
REBUILDING FAMILY DYNAMICS
Roberta’s House provides hope and healing to families. Through Roberta’s House families come together to learn how to process their loss, understand their experience and attend to their grief following the loss of their loved one. It is at Roberta’s House where families reunite and look forward to rebuilding the family structure. Grieving adults need support and encouragement while maintaining multiple roles at home and at work even as they move toward their own restoration. Roberta’s House provides a space for acceptance, caring and support where families can begin to rebuild their forever changed lives together.
FAMILIES HEALING TOGETHER
Families Healing Together is a program where families and children ages 5-17 receive support and encouragement from their peers, other caring adults, and professionals. This program helps families address their experiences and challenges with grief. The Families Healing Together program encourages families to come together to learn new ways to move forward. The sessions help families learn how to embrace their new life after loss, and how to create memorable experiences. While the children work in age-specific groups where asking questions are encouraged, the adults have an opportunity to share their concerns about raising children and teens in grief. The group sessions are held several times a year for ten weeks.
RAYS OF HOPE
Rays of Hope is a Family Support group for survivors of homicide. The program provides awareness and education on grief and grief reactions to homicide. The Rays of Hope program serves children, their adult caregivers, and the entire family system by providing each with essential coping skills to prevent relapse and re-exposure. The Rays of Hope Program teaches survivors how to manage a range of emotions and behaviors related to traumatic grief. In a confidential environment, survivors with similar experiences come together to express their pain and feelings about their loss openly. The Rays of Hope program is administered in Baltimore and Prince George’s County Maryland several times throughout the year for ten weeks. Families and children ages 5-17 participate in the program.
Survivor Advocacy
The Survivor Advocacy Program provides support and resources to families touched by a homicidal death. The program ensures all family members of homicide (survivors) are treated with dignity and respect and provided with services, information and the support they need, throughout their involvement with the criminal justice system. The program aims to meet the emotional, mental, spiritual and physical needs of survivors to minimize the re-victimization, trauma, and the impact of the criminal justice system on the citizens who have been traumatized by the homicide. Our advocates provide early crisis intervention with follow up within 24-48 hours after notification. Roberta’s House Advocates also assist in navigating the process of identifying the body, making funeral arrangements, schedule the medical examiner visit (if necessary), notify school/employers about the crime, and gain permission to retrieve a victim’s property. We are here to assist in all of these matters and more. Roberta’s House Survivor Advocates gauge the surviving family member’s emotional stability and identify which support services are necessary to help survivors cope with their devastating loss.
THERAPEUTIC COUNSELING
Family Therapy Services Roberta’s House provides psychotherapy in which family members discuss and process their pro-longed grief and trauma. We offer free and sliding-scale payments to qualified families.
