Better support needed for bereaved families
Plea for parents living with child loss
Politician Mary Fee has been working with charities to open up discussion on childhood bereavement.
The Scottish Labour MSP for the West of Scotland, who is based in Paisley’s St Mirren Street, hosted an event at Holyrood that looked at the support available to families.
This aimed to break the silence around child bereavement and highlight the lack of counselling and support services available to bereaved parents.
She said: “Child bereavement is a difficult subject to discuss.
“It is every parent ’ s worst nightmare and unfortunately, for some, it is their lived reality.
“It is vitally important that we work both inside and outside of parliament to break the silence around child death and bereavement.
“A variety of charities across Scotland carry out critically important work by providing support and counselling services to bereaved parents.
“However, the reality is, they are providing a service that should be available in Scotland through the NHS.”
This week, seven charities, bereaved parents and more than a dozen MSPs attended the event in the Scottish Parliament, where there were calls for greater access to wide-ranging, free bereavement counselling throughout Scotland and awareness raised around child bereavement to tackle the taboo subject.
Ms Fee spoke about the challenges that face parents after the death of a child, particularly around access to counselling.
“In Scotland there continues to be a major gap in supporting bereaved parents.
“There are too few free counselling services available to offer the necessary, vital support to bereaved parents in the days, weeks and months after the death of their child.
“I was delighted to host the event and bring together a number of charities and MSPs. Without the charities and fantastic people like Nicole and Arlene, bereaved parents would be further missing out on vital support,” she said.
“There are three keys issues that parents experience in trying to access support services.
“Firstly, there is no central resource to signpost bereaved parents to the appropriate counselling and support services.
“Secondly, there are few free counselling services in Scotland.
“This results in the third issue, which is the financial cost incurred by bereaved parents who have to pay to access private fee-charging counsellors.”
Nicole Bowles is founder of the Our Missing Peace campaign, which aims to break the silence around child bereavement by educating people about child death and supporting families who were struggling to cope with the death of a child.
Other charities represented included Brightest Star, which is based in Paisley’s Linwood Road; CHAS; Child Bereavement UK; Calum’s Cabin; Remember My Baby, Scottish Cot Death Trust and SiMBA.
Arlene Smith set up Brightest Star after losing her son Jack Kennedy, just days before his sixth birthday.
The organisation’s aim is to support bereaved families who have lost a child.
Arlene said: “Mary’s event was a great step forward for those who support bereaved families.
“Sadly, there is a massive gap in the services that are available to bereaved families through the public sector. It’s become the role of charities like ourselves to provide these vital services.
“The event was a fantastic opportunity for us to educate MPS on the issues surrounding child bereavement and the lack of support services and resources that are available.
“There is still a massive taboo around child bereavement and with the help of parliament, our voices can be heard and changes can be made.”