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  1. About us
  2. About our work
  3. About Child Bereavement UK

Our impact 2023-24

Child Bereavement UK was established in 1994 and over the last 30 years has grown from a Buckinghamshire-based service with a focus on training professionals, to a UK-wide organisation with the broad remit of supporting children, young people, parents and families when a child grieves or when a child dies. In our financial year ending 31 August 2024 we provided ongoing support to more than 3,000 individuals and trained in excess of 12,000 professionals.

2024 has been a very challenging time for the voluntary sector. Amid rising costs, we are experiencing high demand for our services with an increasing number of grieving families who urgently need support. With many families struggling with the cost of living, it is vitally important that we can continue to offer bereavement support free of charge to all communities. The generosity of our donors and volunteers helps Child Bereavement UK ensure that more families can access life-changing support to help them rebuild their lives after the devastation of child bereavement. Thank you for helping us to continue making an impact, rebuilding lives together.

We provided ongoing support to 3,188 children, young people and adults to help them rebuild their lives when a child grieves or when a child dies.

We had 554 attendances at our support groups, reducing isolation and providing an opportunity for bereaved children, young people and adults to meet others, +10% more than last year.

Our Helpline responded to 8,108 contacts from families and professionals seeking a listening ear, guidance and support.

We ran 1,104 training sessions for 12,773 professionals, equipping them to provide the best possible care to bereaved families, +22% more than last year.

1,500 volunteers gave 7,492 hours of their time to assist with fundraising, awareness, bereavement support groups, and administration.

We established a new Bereavement Service in Birmingham with funding from National Lottery Community Fund.

We marked the charity’s 30th anniversary of rebuilding lives after bereavement with open mornings across our services in Glasgow, Cheshire, Leeds, Buckinghamshire and London.

Our work in education continued to promote resilience and wellbeing for bereaved pupils and students 
  • We trained 2,769 education professionals
  • We facilitated 10 face-to-face ‘Strategies to support bereaved pupils’ workshops including in Inverness, Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham, London and Edinburgh
  • We ran Bereavement Support Training sessions for staff at 40 schools
  • Our online resources for schools, created in collaboration with London Grid for Learning, received over 100,000 page views, with the addition of a new resource this year to support pupils with SEND
We raised awareness of our work, ensuring that bereaved families and professionals could access timely support and information  
  • Visits to our website increased by +6% vs last year, with resources for supporting families, our training, and volunteering opportunities being most popular
  • Our social media followers increased by +7% vs last year, and our posts reached more than 6 million people
  • We launched a new animated film What is grief? with sponsorship from Co-op Funeralcare
  • Our animation Remembering someone special who has died won a gold award in the People’s Choice Category at the Charity Film Awards 2024
  • Our animation The Invisible Suitcase was awarded joint winner in the Mental Health category at the Big Syn International Film Festival 2023
  • We won Communications Team of the Year at the Charity Comms Inspiring Communicator Awards 2024
We took action to ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion are embedded in the charity's culture and that our services are available to everyone
    • Our staff initiative "Let’s Talk About…" ran sessions about Equity, Diversity and Inclusion to help better support colleagues and represent the families and organisations we work with and support
    • We launched a new website function to enable key web pages to be automatically translated into: Polish, Urdu, Panjabi, Romanian, Mandarin, Welsh, and Bengali
    Feedback from professionals we trained
    • Our training receives very positive feedback, with an average mark of 4.6 out of a possible 5 where 5 is ‘very good’
    Feedback from people we supported*
    • 96% were more able to manage their grief
    • 91% were more able to manage their feelings 
    • 85% were more able to share feelings with others 
    • 85% had a greater understanding of grief
    • 99% would recommend the service to others
    • 94% of users of our Helpline said their needs were met             

    They listened and heard at the most traumatic time in my life when I needed help and was sinking. 

    – a caller to our Helpline


    * Our Family survey 2023/24 was completed by 143 families. Our Helpline survey 2023/24 was completed by 113 users.

    Published: 1st January, 2021

    Updated: 27th March, 2025

    Author:

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    Others' stories

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