Rick’s Place President Bill Scatolini cuts the ribbon on its new and expanded facility.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
WILBRAHAM — Rick’s Place in Wilbraham has officially cut the ribbon on its new and expanded location at 35 Post Office Park, Suite 3501D, ensuring that even more of its participants will have an open door to mental health and grief support when it’s needed.
Rick’s Place opened in 2007 to provide free support to children, teens and families through facilitated peer activities, school-based programs and community outreach after a loved one has died. It is named after Rick Thorpe, who grew up in Wilbraham and died in the World Trade Center’s south tower on Sept. 11, 2001.
Executive Director Therese Ross said Rick’s Place first opened because Thorpe’s friends and family recognized that there wasn’t a place of support after the death of a loved one.
The website states, “Our goal is to provide a trusting environment in which participants who are grieving the death of someone significant can share their experiences, receive support and find community. No child should have to grieve alone.”
“The goal is to reduce the isolation that grief often creates,” Ross said. “We have kids who come on-site here two evenings a month and while the kids are in their peer-support groups, the grown-ups are also in a caregiver support group, and that is really focused on ‘how do you parent a child who is grieving, often while you, yourself, are grieving?’… The goal is to really help build a greater understanding of the impact of loss on youth and families.”
Ross said Rick’s Place provides support to families across 25 different Massachusetts and Connecticut towns. Participants increased by 25% this past year and Rick’s Place had to utilize extra space at Wilbraham & Monson Academy just to fit everyone.
“We were outgrowing our old space and our landlord generously moved us to a larger space,” Ross said. “Now we can hold larger groups in a more comfortable setting … it’s a really important milestone for us to have moved to a larger location.”
With the larger space comes the potential for a wider variety of support programs as well.
Ross said adding certain programs, such as a death by suicide or a substance-use loss support group, could create a safer-space and allow participants to know they’re surrounded by people who have experienced a similar kind of loss.
Rick’s Place also recently piloted a new “grandparent as caregiver” program, designed for grandparents who are raising and have guardianship of their grandchildren because the parents are unable to.
Ross said the biggest thing participants say when they come to Rick’s Place is that “everybody there gets it.”
“They don’t have to explain what their loss is like because it’s already understood,” Ross said. “When kids come and they look around the room, they have the feeling that they were the only ones this happened to. They realize now they’re not, that there are other kids like them managing after a significant death … Loss is a permanent absence, and learning to grow around it is very important”
State Sen. Jake Oliveira and state Rep. Angelo Puppolo, whose support has been able to secure $775,000 in state funding, attended the expanded Rick’s Place ribbon cutting on June 18.
“Rick’s Place has become an invaluable resource for our region,” Puppolo said in a press release. “The dedicated staff, volunteers, board members and supporters have created a place where children and families find comfort, connection and hope. I congratulate everyone who made this expansion possible and look forward to seeing Rick’s Place continue changing lives for years to come.”
Ross said the elected officials “recognize this is a topic that is not well supported, and yet it has an incredible impact on people’s lives.”
“We need to bring it more out in the open, and we need to have more support for it,” Ross said. “Research shows that unexamined grief can have negative impacts on kids, particularly on academic experiences. The dropout rate has increased for bereaved youth, and there’s actually a statistic that almost 86% of incarcerated youth had experienced the death of someone significant prior to being detained. When kids are expected to just go back to who they were, it doesn’t work that way. They’re someone entirely different the day after a death than they were the day before.”
More information on Rick’s Place’s services can be found at ricksplacema.org or by calling 413-279-2010.
