Bereavement Service Expansion

Shooting Star Children’s Hospices believes there must be a breakthrough for all families who face the death of a child. Every person grieving a child, brother or sister, or grandchild should have access to the specialist and long-term bereavement support that they deserve. However, this isn’t the case for young families experiencing child death across the UK.

Families known to children’s hospices receive comprehensive programmes of bereavement care. The 30% of families who experience the sudden, and often unimaginably tragic death of their child, do not. Therefore, in November last year, Shooting Star began a pioneering project to extend our bereavement expertise and resource, to address this health inequality, and demonstrate to others how this can be achieved.

This service is available to families across Surrey, south-west London and north-west London. Since November, 60 families have been referred to us for this service, who would not have access to bereavement support without us.

We’ve created a unique model of collaboration, working in partnership with statutory child death review teams, emergency departments and intensive care units to ensure families receive bespoke and tailored support. This includes specialist grief and trauma-focused therapeutic interventions, as well as access to our specialist bereavement centre.