Supporting young people through grief
The Pitch
Problem statement
Due to the pandemic, the work of Let's Talk About Loss has never been more needed. In our Spring 2021 survey, 100% of respondents told us that they would consider attending another of our peer-led monthly meet up groups, and 87% told us attending had positively impacted their grief journey. Let's Talk About Loss now needs to urgently scale up our work, to meet the increased demand and support our volunteers (we're working with over 80 of them) to deliver this essential grief support. We want to increase the training we offer, professionalise our services, and advertise our support so that more young grievers can access it.
Solution
With this project, we will focus on three areas. The first and most important is training. We'll create bespoke, accredited safeguarding training for our Hosts, to ensure they feel confident and comfortable when running groups. We'll also run equality and diversity training, and work with grief experts such as Child Bereavement UK to run further confidence and skills workshops (we ran a few successful pilots at the start of the pandemic). The other areas of the project are around advertising local groups - both offline (posters/flyers) and online (social media) - and equipping Hosts with the resources they need, such as t-shirts to wear at meet ups so newcomers know how to find them.
Why are we best placed to deliver?
Let's Talk About Loss started in 2018 with just one group meeting every month in Nottingham. In June 2021, we have 32 groups across the UK, with a volunteer base of over 80 passionate young grievers, and over 500 people a month attending our groups. We're completely volunteer led, and have proven that our method works. 94% of survey respondents told us our meet ups feel like a safe space, but we want to make this 100%, and we want to ensure that we can continue to deliver our work despite the negative impact of the pandemic on our finances.