It is very important that families are able to share their grief together. This however, can be very hard to do. As adults our instinct is to protect children from anything painful but this can lead to children feeling confused, excluded and can lead to lots of difficult feelings. At CHUMS we recognise that if we can support the parents/carers by educating them about the grieving process and how to include their children this will have lasting implications.

We run parents/carers groups alongside all our workshop programmes and encourage people to attend so that they gain support for themselves at a difficult time in their lives and as a result are more able to support their children.

During the past 12 months we have started bi-monthly groups for parents when a child has died and also a group for those bereaved through suicide. We plan in July to start a group for those whose partner has died. Feedback has been very positive.

Our plans continue for the running of a parenting course and in June four staff and volunteers will be attending a Family Links Nurturing Programme in Oxford to become facilitators.

In September we plan to run our first parenting course, running 2 groups of up to 16 parents concurrently. This will then be evaluated and will hopefully be repeated twice per year. Parents will be referred to the group by staff and volunteers who will recognise that some parents need extra support following a bereavement, when children’s behaviour can become very challenging. This will enable the sharing of difficulties and give guidelines and support in coping at a difficult time. The course will run for 6 weeks.