For organizations that refer grieving people
Referral criteria for grief support
Your resource list probably covers crisis lines, support groups, and therapists. This is about the person none of those fit, and how to choose someone safely when there is no license to check.
Most grief resource lists cover crisis lines, support groups, and licensed therapists. Very few cover the person who wants one-to-one support and is not seeking treatment. This page explains where non-clinical grief support fits, where it does not, and how to choose a practitioner safely when there is no license to check. It is free to use, cite, and adapt, and there is nothing to join.
Hiring or contracting for a grief support role rather than referring out? See hiring for grief and bereavement roles.
The gap
The person your resource list misses
A good grief resource list already covers three things: crisis lines, peer and group support, and licensed clinical care. What it usually does not cover is one-to-one support for someone who is grieving, functioning, and not looking for treatment. That person is common, and on most lists there is nothing for them.
You know who they are. They decline the therapy referral, sometimes politely and sometimes not, because in their own view there is nothing wrong with them. They tried the group once and did not go back, or the group is bereavement-focused and their loss was a divorce, a diagnosis, a job, or an estrangement. They are managing. They are also carrying something with nowhere to put it.
Non-clinical grief support exists for exactly that person. It is structured, one-to-one, forward-looking work on adjustment and life after a loss, and it does not require anyone to be unwell in order to qualify for it.
What your list likely covers
- Crisis and urgent support
- Peer and group support, usually free
- Licensed clinical care, verifiable through a state board
What tends to be missing
- One-to-one support for someone not seeking treatment
- Support for non-death losses, which most groups do not cover
- Continued support after your own program's window closes
There is a capacity argument as well. Federal regulation requires a Medicare-certified hospice to run an organized bereavement program under the supervision of a qualified professional with experience or education in grief or loss counseling, and to make bereavement services available to the family and others named in the bereavement plan of care for up to one year following the death. The same regulations state plainly that bereavement counseling is a required hospice service and is not reimbursable. In most programs that requirement falls to one coordinator alongside a full caseload. Non-clinical support does not replace what your team provides. It can absorb individual work that a small bereavement staff cannot sustain across twelve or thirteen months.
Sources: 42 CFR 418.64(d)(1), counseling services and bereavement, and 42 CFR 418.204(c), special coverage requirements.
Boundaries
Where coaching does not belong
Grief coaching is not appropriate for someone at risk of harm, someone showing indications of a clinical condition, someone with complicated, prolonged, or traumatic grief, or someone in crisis. Those situations require licensed or emergency care.
This is worth stating before anything else, because it is the question underneath the question. A practitioner who blurs this line is a liability to the family and to whoever gave them the name. Grief coaching does not diagnose, treat, prescribe, provide psychotherapy, or serve as crisis intervention, and no credential changes that.
It also does not compete with clinical care. Non-clinical support frequently runs alongside therapy with appropriate coordination, and for many people that combination works better than either alone.
You are not judging whether someone is a good coach. You are deciding whether it is safe to put them in front of a grieving family who trusts you. Those are different questions, and only the second one is yours.
The difficulty
Why vetting falls to you
There is no license for grief coaching, no registration requirement, and no state board that reviews who uses the title. Counselors, social workers, and nurses all have one. Coaches do not. A person can decide today that this is their profession and begin taking clients tomorrow, and nothing about that is against the law.
That is why the other three categories on your list feel easier. A crisis line is a known quantity. A national peer organization is a known quantity. A therapist can be checked against a state board in a minute. An individual coach can be checked against nothing, which is why most lists either omit the category or fill it with entries nobody reviewed.
This is not a criticism of trained coaches, many of whom are well prepared and take the work seriously. It describes a market your team has to navigate without a licensing board to lean on.
There is a consequence that is easy to miss. A professional who cannot confirm a practitioner's preparation is unlikely to put their own name behind the referral, so the category tends to get left off entirely rather than evaluated case by case. The result is not that families are sent to poorly prepared coaches. It is that the person who wanted one-to-one non-clinical support gets a group they will not attend, or a therapy referral they will decline, and no referral happens at all.
That pattern is visible in written policy. Information and referral services, including 211 systems, publish inclusion and exclusion criteria for their community resource databases, and those criteria commonly require that a for-profit provider hold a license or certification where the field is licensed, and exclude providers whose services cannot be verified. Each system sets its own policy, so the wording varies. None of it is aimed at grief coaching. Much of it excludes the category as a side effect. Employee assistance clinical panels typically require state licensure, with the same result.
Examples of published policy: 211 Long Island inclusion and exclusion criteria and 211 Connecticut inclusion and exclusion criteria. Standards for resource database inclusion criteria are maintained by Inform USA, formerly the Alliance of Information and Referral Systems.
The rest of this page is what to use instead, at no cost.
The standard
The six criteria
A qualified non-clinical grief practitioner can evidence six things: grief-specific education, documented practice, a written scope, defined referral thresholds, accountability to published ethics, and standing you can verify independently. A practitioner who can evidence all six is a defensible entry on your list, whether or not they hold a credential.
- Grief-specific education. Training whose subject is grief and loss, from any credible source, rather than a general qualification that mentions grief in passing.
- Documented practice. Real experience working with grieving people, evidenced rather than asserted.
- A written scope of practice. A clear statement of what the practitioner does and does not do.
- Defined referral thresholds. Named indicators for when a person requires licensed clinical or emergency care.
- Accountability to published ethics. A code of conduct held by a body outside the practitioner's own business, with a route for your organization to raise a concern.
- Independently verifiable standing. Something you can check without going through the practitioner.
Criteria that only one credential can satisfy are not criteria. They are a preference. A practitioner without a credential may meet all six, and should be evaluated against them individually.
In conversation
Six questions to ask any grief coach
Ask these of any practitioner you are considering, credentialed or not. Completing a training program demonstrates attendance. It does not demonstrate competence, and these questions are how you tell the difference.
1. What is your grief-specific education, and where did it come from?
What you are listening for. Training whose subject was grief and loss. That may be a dedicated grief coaching program, graduate coursework, clinical training in bereavement, chaplaincy or thanatology education, or a combination. The form matters less than whether grief itself was the subject and who taught it.
Cause for pause. A general coaching or wellness certificate with no grief-specific content, or an answer resting entirely on personal loss. Lived experience is valuable and it is not education.
2. How much experience do you have working with grieving people, and can you document it?
What you are listening for. A concrete answer, and a willingness to evidence it through scheduling records, an employer, a supervisor, or a professional reference. Client confidentiality is not a barrier to documenting that the work happened.
Cause for pause. Vagueness, or discomfort with the question itself.
3. What is your scope of practice, and what do you not do?
What you are listening for. A clear, unhesitating answer. A qualified practitioner can tell you what falls outside their work without being defensive about it.
Cause for pause. Any suggestion that they can help with anything, or language implying they treat, heal, or cure.
4. What would cause you to refer someone to licensed care, and what would you do in that moment?
What you are listening for. Specific thresholds, and a warm handoff rather than an abrupt ending. They should name risk of harm, clinical conditions, prolonged or traumatic grief, and substance use without being prompted.
Cause for pause. Treating referral as a failure, or as something that happens only if the person asks for it.
5. Who holds you accountable, and what happens if someone raises a concern?
What you are listening for. A body outside their own business, a published code of ethics, and a process that can result in a real consequence.
Cause for pause. Accountability that begins and ends with the school that trained them. A training program has a financial relationship with its graduates and is not a neutral party.
6. Can I verify your standing independently, and how?
What you are listening for. A credential number, a registry, or a licensing board you can check without going through them.
Cause for pause. A certificate image as the only evidence. A certificate proves a course was completed on a date. It does not tell you whether the person is in good standing now.
A training certificate is issued by the school that taught the course and records that someone attended. A board credential is issued by an independent body and records that education, practice, ethics, and examined competence were reviewed by someone with no stake in where the person trained.
Both are legitimate. They answer different questions, and only the second one can be checked by you.
Safety
The answer that matters most
Question four is where your organization's exposure sits. A practitioner who cannot describe the boundary between coaching and clinical care, and what they do when someone crosses it, does not belong on your list regardless of what credentials they hold.
A competent practitioner refers to licensed or emergency care when a person presents with:
- Risk of harm to self or others, referred immediately to emergency or crisis support
- Clinical conditions beyond the scope of coaching, such as clinical depression or anxiety
- Complicated, prolonged, or traumatic grief requiring clinical treatment
- Substance use or other conditions requiring licensed care
Referral is not termination
A practitioner who refers someone to licensed care does not have to end the relationship. In-scope coaching can continue alongside clinical treatment with appropriate coordination.
That matters when you are the clinician making the referral, because it means sending someone to a coach does not put them beyond your reach, and a coach who identifies a clinical need will send them back rather than hold on.
Under the INBGC standard, scope of practice and referral is one of the six topic areas the Board Examination covers, weighted equally with the rest. Read the full Code of Ethics and Scope of Practice.
Before you add someone
Practical questions worth asking
Once a practitioner meets the six criteria, the remaining questions are logistical. Fees, format, confidentiality, and who they are equipped to work with all vary by practitioner, and none of them are set by INBGC. Ask directly, and record the answers beside the entry so your team does not have to ask twice.
What do you charge, and how do you structure sessions?
Practitioners set their own fees and session structures. INBGC does not set, approve, or publish what a coach charges. Ask for the fee, the session length, and whether they work in packages or single sessions, so a family knows what to expect before they call.
Can this be billed to insurance?
Generally no. Because grief coaching is non-clinical, it is usually not reimbursable through health insurance, and most practitioners bill privately. Some employers, employee assistance programs, and community organizations fund it directly. If cost is a barrier for the people you serve, ask what the practitioner offers, since some hold sliding-scale or reduced-fee spots. Note it beside the entry where they do.
Do you work in person, by video, or both?
Both are common. Video widens the pool available to someone in a rural area or without transportation, which matters more than it might appear when your list is organized by geography.
How is confidentiality handled, and what are the limits?
A practitioner should be able to state their confidentiality practice and its limits without hesitating, including the circumstances in which they would break it to prevent serious harm or because the law requires it. If your organization needs any information back from the coach, that requires the person's consent and should be agreed in advance.
Who do you work with, and who do you not?
Ask directly about age. Supporting grieving children and adolescents requires preparation distinct from adult work, and many practitioners work only with adults. Ask about group work as well as individual, and about the kinds of loss they have real experience with, since someone strong in bereavement may have little experience with divorce, estrangement, or job loss.
Do you carry professional liability insurance?
Ask, and ask for the carrier and the coverage amount. Provider networks that contract with licensed clinicians generally require it, and it is a reasonable question to put to any practitioner you are considering. Your own organization may already have a coverage threshold it applies to contracted providers, and the same figure is a sensible reference point here. INBGC does not require certificants to carry coverage, though board certified coaches qualify for group rates through the board's insurance partners. Treat the answer as information rather than as something the credential guarantees.
What languages do you work in, and what is your availability?
Both are practical barriers that surface after a referral rather than before. Ask about language support, current waiting time, and how quickly someone can be seen, so you are not sending a grieving family toward a wait they did not expect.
If someone needs support and nothing on your list fits, you can describe the situation through Find a Grief Coach. There is no cost, and no coach can pay to be matched ahead of another.
For your policy
Policy language you can adopt
The language below can be pasted into a referral protocol, a resource list inclusion policy, or a vendor policy, and used as written or adapted. There is no cost, no permission required, and no requirement to tell INBGC that you have used it.
Sample inclusion criteria for a grief resource list
- Each entry on this organization's grief resource list is identified by the kind of support it provides: crisis support, peer or group support, licensed clinical care, or non-clinical individual support.
- Non-clinical individual practitioners included on the list hold documented grief-specific education, documented practice experience with grieving people, a written scope of practice, and accountability to a published code of ethics with a route for this organization to raise a concern.
- Each such practitioner operates within a published non-clinical scope that names the indicators at which referral to licensed or emergency care is required.
- An active Board Certified Grief Coach credential issued by the Independent National Board for Grief Coaching satisfies these criteria, as does an equivalent credential with published standards, examined competence, verified practice, and an enforceable code of ethics. Practitioners without a credential are evaluated against the criteria individually.
- The list records who reviewed each entry and when, and is reviewed at intervals set by this organization. Where a credential is held, its status is confirmed at each review.
The fourth clause is written to accept an equivalent credential deliberately. A policy that names one credentialing body and no criteria is a policy about a brand. One that names the criteria is a policy about safety, and it holds up if the field changes. Program Administration will provide the published scope of practice and referral indicators in a form your team can circulate, at no cost.
The shortcut
When a credential does the work for you
An active Board Certified Grief Coach credential satisfies all six criteria, because an independent board has already reviewed the education, the practice hours, the ethics agreement, and examined competence. You can confirm current standing with a credential number in seconds, which makes list review fast rather than a project.
That is what a credential is for. It is not a substitute for judgment, and it does not mean a practitioner will be the right fit for the people you serve, which is why the practical questions above still apply. It means the six questions have already been answered by someone with no financial interest in the answer.
INBGC does not provide foundational grief coach training, so the board has no stake in where a certificant studied. The Advisory Board sets and owns the standard, and Program Administration applies it to individual candidates. Nobody with a commercial interest in how many people certify helps define the requirements.
For how to verify a credential, raise a concern about a certified coach, or request written verification for a credentialing file, see information for referral partners. Referral partners are never charged for anything.
In practice
Applying these criteria in your setting
The criteria do not change by setting, but where the gap shows up does. Below is how each kind of organization typically runs into it.
Hospice and palliative care
The gap appears when a family needs individual support your program cannot sustain across the full bereavement window, or when that window closes and the person is not finished grieving. It also appears when the loss a family is carrying is not the death you served them through.
Funeral and death care
Families often return long after the service, asking where to turn next. Aftercare is defined differently at every firm, and the resource sheet is frequently the whole program. Vetting the individual entries in advance is what turns that sheet from a formality into something you would stand behind.
Chaplaincy and spiritual care
Where your relationship with a person ends by design, the handoff is usually to a group, a congregation, or a list. The gap is the person who wants continued one-to-one support, including someone who wants a practitioner who will work respectfully with their faith rather than around it.
Employee assistance and human resources
EAP provider panels typically require state licensure, so a non-clinical practitioner will not be in network. The gap is the employee whose loss is real but is not a clinical condition, who does not want counseling sessions and does want somewhere structured to put it. These criteria apply to the community resources you point people toward outside the panel, and to any non-clinical support an employer funds directly.
Therapist referral networks
The gap is the client who does not meet criteria for treatment, or who has completed it and still wants support while they rebuild. Question four matters most here, since it determines whether a practitioner will recognize a clinical need and route someone back to you.
Senior living and healthcare systems
Repeated loss and bereavement overload are common in these settings, and staff grief is real alongside resident and family grief. These criteria apply to any external practitioner your team may name to a resident, a patient, or a family, whether that name comes from your own list or your hospice partner's.
Common questions
Program Administration
Questions about your resource list
INBGC will answer any question about these criteria, scope, referral thresholds, or verification, and will provide the published scope of practice and referral indicators in a form your team can circulate. There is no cost and nothing to sign up for.
The download contains the six criteria and six questions, the sample policy language, and a one-page verification reference for your intake team. No email address is required, and the criteria on this page are complete without it.
Version and citation
Using and citing these criteria
These criteria are published as a stable reference so that an organization can adopt them, cite them, and know what it adopted. Revisions are published at this address with a new version number and date, and the version you cite remains identifiable.
Suggested citation
Independent National Board for Grief Coaching. Referral criteria for grief coaching, Version 1.0. Published August 30, 2026. inbgc.org/referral-criteria/
You may reproduce these criteria and the sample policy language in your own referral protocol, inclusion policy, vetting checklist, staff training, or intake procedure, in whole or in part, with attribution. No permission is required, no fee applies, and there is no requirement to notify INBGC that you have used them.
Download Version 1.0 as a PDF for circulation, printing, or a policy file.
Version 1.0 · Published August 2026 · Independent National Board for Grief Coaching · Questions about this document may be sent to [email protected].
See also information for referral partners, the Code of Ethics and Scope of Practice, and grief coach vs. therapist.