When a Parent Dies, Utah Found a Way to Actually Help

When Ashlyn Stone’s partner Hayden Hansen died in a car accident in Kaysville, Utah, in 2020, the silence from government agencies was deafening. No one reached out. No one offered resources. Stone was even initially told her children weren’t eligible for Social Security survivor benefits because she and Hansen had never married. She cobbled together support the hard way—through family, a friend’s recommendation for therapy, and eventually discovering The Sharing Place, a nonprofit offering grief counseling.

Stone’s story isn’t unique. Across the country, fewer than half of bereaved children actually receive Social Security survivor benefits they’re entitled to—averaging $1,100 per month. Many have no access to grief counseling. And children in Black, Tribal, and rural communities face particularly stark gaps, living in what researchers call“bereavement deserts.”It’s a massive blind spot in a system designed to help.

But something’s shifting in Utah. Since 2023, state officials and nonprofits have been systematically identifying grieving children and connecting families to benefits and support services. It started with a deceptively simple idea: Governor Spencer Cox issued an executive order requiring a voluntary checkbox on death certificates asking whether the deceased left behind minor children. The Granite School District added the same question to back-to-school forms. The state allocated $400,000 to help families navigate benefits applications and find grief support through the 211 Service Navigator program.

The impact has been real. Since the program launched, Utah has identified thousands of children who may be eligible for survivor benefits and grief services. On average, about 1,000 checkboxes are marked yearly—and that number only captures whether a child exists, not how many siblings may be affected. Nate Winters, DHHS’s deputy director of Operations, notes that 211 Service Navigators can help families access not just counseling, but also housing and food assistance. Funeral home directors now have materials to connect families with these resources immediately, dramatically shortening the gap between loss and help.

What makes Utah stand out isn’t just the checkbox itself—it’s the infrastructure behind it. Julie Kaplow, an expert on childhood grief and director of the Trauma and Grief Center at Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute in Texas, has trained clinicians across the country. Utah is the only state that asked her to train the people who make first contact with grieving families. That’s the difference between identifying a need and actually meeting it.

The Social Security Advisory Board has already recommended other states follow Utah’s model. Yet no state has yet adopted it, though governors in Tennessee and Illinois—Governor Bill Lee, who lost his wife when his children were young, and Governor JB Pritzker, who lost both parents by age 17—have shown interest. What Utah proved is that systemic change doesn’t require a massive overhaul. It requires a governor willing to listen, a collaborative mindset, and the recognition that grieving children deserve the same automatic outreach as any other vulnerable population. For thousands of Utah kids, it’s making all the difference.