In National Grief Awareness Week and following the vote on Assisted Dying, AtaLoss’s community bereavement support, The Bereavement Journey® is needed more than ever and taking the UK by storm. The 7 sessions of films and facilitated peer group discussion, offered by churches for their communities, is not just popular, but early findings from feedback, since its update last year, are showing outstanding results.
The Bereavement Journey seeks to address the national problem of unsupported and unresolved grief following decades of death denial and bereavement support neglect. This need was identified by the UK Commission on Bereavement in September 2022, which called for more bereavement support provision, highlighting the role of faith communities. Due to its effectiveness, The Bereavement Journey has already spread, largely by word of mouth, to a staggering 380 churches since its relaunch in Sep 2023, with 2-3 new Leaders packs being ordered every week.
“This is a new form of bereavement support” says Yvonne Tulloch, CEO of AtaLoss and leader of The Bereavement Journey programme. “With death having been taboo for such a long time, we’ve lost the art of supporting the grief of those around us and relied too much on the specialists. This programme is bringing back community support, training and equipping volunteers in churches to reach out in a structured and safe way to their communities. It’s packaged, easy to deliver, and very effective, supporting any adult to process their loss, whether the death was recent or long ago. And wonderfully, the optional session on faith questions at the end is drawing people to faith and into church.”
With bereavement having been overlooked in the Assisted Dying Bill, AtaLoss convened a Forum in Parliament ahead of the Second Reading for MPs, encouraging the government to take seriously the need for more bereavement support. This followed the European Grief Conference in Dublin, where bereavement organisations from across the Western world considered how to address Western society’s grief problem, suggesting 4 levels of support: grief literacy, signposting to help, community support and specialists/therapist help.
Yvonne continues, “As the subject of grief is opening up, specialists are becoming overwhelmed. Building capacity in the first 3 levels will enable most people to process their grief healthily, reserving specialists for the complex needs. AtaLoss was already addressing the first 2 levels: raising awareness and providing UK wide signposting. Now The Bereavement Journey is making a big difference in the 3rd level of community support, and also proving effective in mission. As Church of England research showed following the pandemic, 90%+ of the public are open to churches supporting them with grief, – and Hope Together’s Talking Jesus research showed that a life event is the biggest influence in adults coming to faith. The bereavement Journey is proving this whilst meeting a great societal need.”
Revd Nicky Grey, Head of Church Engagement and Katy Tutt, General Manager, The Bereavement Journey are available for interview.
For media enquiries contact: press@ataloss.org