Parents bereaved by COVID - NEW GROUP

31 January 2022, 19.00 – 20.30

ONLINE via Zoom

For the last 22 months, the UK has been in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic. Sadly, for some of us, the reality has come close to home in that we have tragically experienced the death of our beloved son or daughter from COVID.

This new one-off online support group is for parents who have experienced the death of a son or daughter from COVID. Please note our sharing together in this group will not only focus on the cause of death of our child but also on the impact of loss in this period of the pandemic.

The group will offer you an opportunity to talk and share with other parents some of the additional struggles around losing your child from COVID during this time. These may include not being to see your son or daughter in hospital, travel with them in the ambulance, say goodbye to them - or perhaps you had to say goodbye online rather than in person. Ambulance or hospital staff may not have been as supportive as you would have liked or maybe communication was poor leaving you with many unanswered questions and anxieties about your child’s treatment and final days particularly if they were alone or you couldn’t be with them at any point.

You may not have had the opportunity to avail of the normal rituals of a funeral service that can offer comfort, for instance having friends and families in attendance. Investigation and legal processes may have been delayed; you may be feeling isolated with your grief as friends and families may feel unable, or been wary of, being in touch because of the pandemic. You may also feel angry and deeply upset by the oft-quoted statistics and constant updates on numbers and deaths and that sense of your child and you as their parents being merely another statistic rather than individuals directly and personally impacted by the loss of your child in these particularly traumatic times. You may be in turmoil as you imagine or even know that more could be done to save your child.

You would be warmly welcome to join us to share these, and any other topics you would like to discuss, around losing a son or daughter to COVID during this time. Group numbers will be limited to a maximum of 15 parents so do please book via this web page to secure your place. We can only take bookings online and if we are fully booked priority will be given to those parents who have not attended a Compassionate Friends online support group before. Once you book, you will receive an automatic acknowledgment by email. Nearer the time, you will receive the details of the Zoom link to attend the group. Just a reminder to check your spam or junk email folders if you haven’t received the link for the online meeting by the day of the meeting.

Please contact events@tcf.org.uk if you have any questions or queries.

Please note that these online events are run by bereaved parent volunteers. Our volunteers are not professionals and so what we offer is a uniquely warm, comforting and supportive online group organised and facilitated by parents who have also experienced the loss of a child and have found understanding and hope themselves through The Compassionate Friends.

If you are bereaved in the last 3-4 months:
Please note, our online support group meetings may not be the most appropriate form of support for very newly bereaved parents. We know how vulnerable we can be in the early weeks and months of our grief and how raw the pain and heartache can feel.

In an online support environment, we will of course do all we can to express our empathy to newly bereaved parents verbally but we won’t be able to offer the very important physical presence and contact that physical groups can offer especially when parents become very upset. Our online meetings tend to be shorter than physical meetings which also means that we won’t have as much time to hear from all group members in the ways in which we would do if we were meeting face to face.

We know that in the early days of our grief, there is a strong need to tell our ‘story’ about the loss of our precious child. We know that this is a very important part of grieving – however, our support groups, whether online or face to face can only offer the opportunity to say a little about your loss and in not too much detail so as to enable everyone to have a chance to speak and also to minimise the risk of anyone attending being re-traumatised around their own loss by hearing graphic details of someone else’s loss. It would help to know how early you are in your loss and whether you are already receiving TCF support – what we don’t wish to do is increase the vulnerability of any bereaved parent by not managing your expectations about what our support group offers and is unable to offer. We may make contact if we need to explore with you whether our online group support is the most appropriate way to support you at this stage in your loss.

Please note this group is for bereaved parents in the UK only – if you want to join from abroad please contact us on events@tcf.org.uk