Grief and loss support
Grief and loss for anyone can be a distressing time and can feel intense and difficult. These are natural reactions, and for most people they ease over time with support from family, friends and wider networks.
There are lots of organisations and resources both locally and nationally that can support people through this difficult period, helping people to understand and process grief and loss and what they can do to self-care or support someone else.
Read below more about some of the resources and organisations that can help.
Lincolnshire and surrounding area
Lincolnshire Centre for Grief and Loss
While the centre can no longer provide free access to counselling they will continue to provide a service at a subsidised cost to support children and young people following a bereavement, family/relationship breakdown, serious illness and anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is when someone you care for is expected to die following an accident or a serious/terminal illness.
Find out more on their website at www.lcgl.or.uk/childrens-counselling
St Barnabas Hospice
Provide free emotional, psychological and spiritual wellbeing support to patients with a life-limiting or terminal illness, and their family, friends and carers. They offer guidance to families in how to support children but do not provide direct counselling support to under 18’s.
Find out more on their website at www.stbarnabashospice.co.uk
Grief Wellbeing Centre in Grantham
Offer a healing space for individuals and families under the National Bereavement Advice Service, a registered charity dedicated to providing essential services for those experiencing grief and loss. They offer family support sessions in a group setting on a Saturday morning for parents and children to heal together and strengthen bonds through shared activities.
Find out more on their website www.
The Butterfly Hospice Trust: Butterflies and Bees Family and Children’s Support Group in Boston
The group offers a safe and supportive space for families to come together and begin open, gentle conversations during challenging moments. It is a support group that provides creative/play based activities to help young people work through emotions, helping understand what is happening.
Find out more on their website www.
Children's Bereavement Centre: South Kesteven, North Kesteven and Lincoln
The centre helps children aged 3 to 18 to cope with the grieving process, brought on by the death or terminal illness diagnosis of someone close. They offer a short-term early intervention service for children, young people, (average of eight sessions) and their parents/carers (average of six sessions) affected by any bereavement or pre-bereavement due to terminal illness.
Find out more on their website www.
Cruse Bereavement Support in Boston, Lincoln, Stamford, Bourne, Spalding and Skegness
A national charity providing bereavement support, following the death of someone close. They offer one-to-one video or telephone support and group video meetings.
Find out more on their website www.
Specialist Family Practitioner Team at United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
The team provide emotional support, using counselling techniques for children and young people who have experienced the death of a parent or guardian or sibling, or have a close family member with an anticipated life expectancy of less than a year.
Find out more on their website at www.
AMPARO - Support following suicide
AMPARO is a service commissioned within Lincolnshire that provides support for anyone affected by suicide. Support can be provided one-to-one, to family groups, groups of colleagues or peers – whatever is preferred and is most appropriate to the situation. The service can also be delivered in someone’s home or wherever they are most comfortable. The service is completely confidential and can provide short-term or longer-term support.
Find out more on their website at www.
Jen's Special Place : Scunthorpe (North Lincolnshire)
A bereavement support group for young people aged 2-17 years and their families. They run monthly social evenings, as well as organise trips and wellbeing workshops for young people and provide emotional support.
Find out more on their website at: www.
National support
Winston's Wish
A national charity that helps children, teenagers and young adults (up to the age of 25). They provide digital bereavement information, advice and support for young people across the UK who are grieving the death of someone important to them. As well as helping advise adults who are caring for young grieving people.
Find out more on their website www.
Hope Again
Youth website of Cruse Bereavement Support, for young people aged 12-25 experiencing bereavement. They offer support, advice and signposting, solely online to children and young people who have lost a loved one/s.
Find out more on their website www.
Child Bereavement UK
National organisation that supports children, young people, parents and families when a child grieves or when a child dies. They offer face to face support, support groups, a helpline, live chat and email support.
Find out more on their website www.
Childhood Bereavement Network (CBN)
Hosted by the National Children's Bureau which is working to support bereaved children, young people and their families across the UK. They offer advice and guidance and provide support to schools with key resources including the ‘Growing in Grief Awareness’ toolkit.
Find out more on their website www.childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk
Grief Encounter
A national service that supports bereaved children and young people aged 4–25 years old who are experiencing mild to moderate difficulties caused by the death of someone close. They offer direct support to families with help from a team of family liaison officers and therapists.
Find out more on their website www.
Assist Trauma Care
Specialist therapy for traumatic bereavement. Offering therapeutic help to adults and children, individuals and families, affected by a wide range of traumatic occurrences. ASSIST therapists work with both the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and also with traumatic bereavement and grief.
Find out more on their website www.
Care for the family
Support for bereaved parents, siblings, and partners. Peer support is available for any parent whose son or daughter has died at any age, in any circumstance and at any stage in their journey of grieving.
Find out more on their website www.careforthefamily.org.uk
Rainbows Bereavement Support
Peer support programmes for children and young people. They also provide support programs for children and young people in schools.
Find out more on their website www.
Support After Suicide Partnership (SASP)
Support for those bereaved by suicide. Resources and support are available for those affected by suicide. They also support a wide range of organisations to adopt best practice in suicide bereavement service provision.
Find out more on their website www.supportaftersuicide.org.uk
Child Death Helpline
A freephone service for anyone affected by the death of a child of any age from any cause. The helpline is operated by a dedicated team of volunteers who are all bereaved parents.
Find out more on their website www.
Road Peace
They provide information and support services to people bereaved or seriously injured in road crashes.
Find out more on their website www.
The Compassionate Friends
A national charity providing peer support to bereaved parents, siblings and grandparents who have experienced the death of a child of any age (from 1 month old to an adult child) and from any cause.
Find out more on their website www.
The Lullaby Trust
Provides a supportive and confidential space for anyone affected by the sudden or unexpected death of a baby or young child. These services are not solely for parents. They’re also for family members and anyone close to a bereaved family.
Find out more on their website www.
Brake - Road Safety Charity
Working to end road casualties and make communities safer with campaigns and offers support to victims. Offers support through National Road Victim Service. Provides a range of guides to help you understand the complex, unfamiliar procedures that often follow a road crash where someone has died or been seriously injured.
Find out more on their website www.
Mental health and emotional wellbeing support
Where it is identified that a young person might need additional support to process their grief and loss - for example, if someone is at risk of developing more complex mental health challenges the Trust has a broad range of emotional wellbeing and mental health services for children and young people available, ranging from early intervention to crisis support. There are also some national charities that have a wealth of information and support. These include:
Kooth
Kooth is an online platform to help young people with their mental health and wellbeing. It's a welcoming space to safely explore feelings. Young people can anonymously talk to other people their own age on moderated discussion forum and chat to mental health professionals via messaging.
Read more about Kooth on their website www.
The Mix
Provides free, confidential support for young people under 25 via online, social and mobile. They offer support through content, counselling, discussion boards and group chats.
Read more on their website www.
Lumi Nova
Lumi Nova, is a digital therapeutic game for children aged 7-12 in Lincolnshire who are struggling with worries, fears or anxiety.
Lumi Nova combines Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) with responsible, age-appropriate mobile gaming to provide early intervention, therapeutic support for childhood anxiety.
Find out more on their website www.
Lincolnshire Here4You line
The LPFT manages advice line provides advice to young people, parents, carers or professionals such as teachers. In this telephone call, we may give tips and strategies on ways you could help yourself, or we may agree together that you need some extra support from our teams such as Healthy Minds or Mental Health Support Teams. If we do not think we are the best place to help, we will always let you know who is and where to go next.
Read more about Here4You by using this link
Mental Health Support Teams
Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) are an expanding service designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people in education settings i.e. schools and colleges, or who are not on roll with an education setting.
Teams are made up of professionals called Clinical Lead Practitioners and Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs). These are workers who have had specialised training to support young people presenting with a wide range of mental health issues. They work closely with schools and colleges and other children and young people's services.
Healthy Minds
Healthy Minds Lincolnshire provide emotional wellbeing support for children and young people up to 19 years old. If you have a special educational need or disability or are a care leaver we can see you up to the age of 25.
Healthy Minds Lincolnshire provides early support when you start to feel that life is getting out of control and you need some help to cope. Our teams are made up of a variety of professionals.
Read more about Healthy Minds and how to access by using this link
