Our services

Our bereavement support charity aims to ensure that children, young people, and their parents/carers in Plymouth and the immediate surrounding area have support at a sad and difficult time.

Grief journey group

Our grief journey group is our focal service. It is a 7-week programme that runs 3 times a year. Our highly trained staff and volunteers use activities and learning, to help bereaved families remember and think about feelings whilst being kept busy and actively involved in each session. Parents and carers have time to share their challenges and successes, as the family comes to terms with the changes that come following a bereavement.

Memory days

At one of our facilitated memory days, we offer families shorter group activities, that run over a few hours during a single day. We offer various different days across the year, such as ‘Memories at the Museum’ that takes place at The Box in Plymouth and ones centred around very difficult times for bereaved families, for example our ‘Caring at Christmas’ day.

Family therapy

We offer family therapy when we recognise that the dynamics of the family have been particularly changed, and that relationships have been damaged, following a death. It gives you a safe space to explore how the family has been affected, with the guidance and observations of our therapist. This clinic is led by Professor Jacqui Stedmon, a highly experienced clinical psychologist, and family therapist, with a long career in the field of paediatric psychology and children’s bereavement.

EMDR

EMDR therapy (eye movement and desensitisation reprocessing) is an effective treatment helping people recover from the trauma of PTSD symptoms. It allows parents to remember, without the distress of the past trauma. Using two 2-hour sessions, adults meet in a group and are led through  reprocessing by a trained therapist. This therapy focuses on the senses, rather than speaking about what happened, while bilateral stimulation (one side and then the other!) is undertaken.

Individual work

We can provide a limited amount of time with individual children, young people, and adults, where group work is not manageable for families, or where further work is needed. This is also offered as part of our assessment when we first hear about your grief.

Peer-to-peer

Our team of dedicated, skilled volunteers undergo training with us before allocating them to different groups, including parents and carers, to lead peer-to-peer support groups for the wider family. For example, our grandparents’ group meet once a month, to talk through how it is to go back to caring for children again, later in life.