Lantern Event 2021

We are excited to let you know that we are holding our Lantern Event on 12th December 2021, which is just 5 1/2 weeks away! This is an in-person event.

The Lantern Event is an opportunity to come together in memory of someone special who has died. We spend time together doing an activity as a group before heading outside on a short walk with our lanterns.

Invitations to this event have been sent out this week, but if you would like to attend and haven’t yet received an invitation please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team and we can discuss this with you.

Lantern Event 2021

Last year, we moved our annual Lantern Walk to a virtual alternative. This year, we are planning to return to our in-person Lantern Event. This will be running mid-December, and more information will be shared in due course.

Running events like this, and providing support for bereaved children and young people comes at a cost. The last couple of years fundraising has been tougher than ever. With that in mind, we have opened a campaign on Just Giving, to help us raise much needed funds at this time of year.

If you feel able to support or share our campaign, follow the link to our campaign page.

We're Recruiting!

Would you like to join the team here at Guy’s Gift?

We’re expanding the team after a fantastic grant awarded from The National Lottery Community Grants (more on that later!). Our team expansion means we will be able to work with more bereaved children and young people across Coventry and Warwickshire.

Our vacancies range from administrative work throughto providing bereavement counselling and support. Details for all our current vacancies can be found here.

If you would like to discuss our vacancies, get in touch with us here.

Return to in-person support

As the start of the new school year is beginning, we are now in a position where we can begin to offer some in-person support again too. We are all very much looking forward to resuming work in this way, and getting to meet some of you in-person for the very first time.

For now, we will be limited to visiting one school/venue per day. This means that some of the sessions (both one-to-one or group sessions) we offer will still be remote via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. This will be reviewed regularly and any changes will be shared with schools and families as appropriate.

We will be working with schools to make sure that we follow any guidelines in place locally, and the team will be ensuring that sessions are as safe as possible. To do this we are only taking what is necessary with us to the support session. Children and young people are encouraged to bring their own pens/pencils with them. Where resources are shared these will be cleaned between sessions. We will be making sure that everyone is comfortable with the session taking place in-person and there is an option for remote sessions to continue if that is preferred.

We are happy to discuss this with you.

Please contact us on info@guysgift.co.uk or if you have an allocated counsellor/bereavement support worker you can speak with them directly.

Coop Community Virtual Coffee Mornings

Coop Midcounties have been supporting Guy’s Gift over the past couple of years. Support which has meant financial donations, but also fantastic volunteering support, and community interaction.

Community is a big part of what Coop stand for, and this is certainly a big part of what Guy’s Gift is about too. Afterall, who are we without our wonderful community too.

2019 Lantern Walk with members of the Coop Midcounties team, and Father Christmas,

Over the past couple of years, volunteers from Coop have supported group session (back when we could do these in person), supported with administrative tasks, hosted our annual Lantern Walk in December, reviewed policies and procedures, supported with updating our resources,… They are a fantastic team who always take the time to find new ways of working with us.

Guy’s Gift Service Manager, Lisbeth Bakewell attending the Coop Midcounties Virtual Coffee Morning, using a mug with a design by a young person from a local school also being supported by Coop Midcounties

So, a great big thank you to the team at Coop Midcounties. Particularly in finding creative and enjoyable ways to bring charities from across the region together over the last 12 months whilst meeting in-person has been impossible.

We look forward to the Virtual Coffee Mornings and updates from the team, as well as the ongoing invaluable support you give us here at Guy’s Gift.

Virtual Groups

Whilst the Covid-19 pandemic has put a stop to in-person interaction, largely since March 2020, we have had to get creative about how we work.

Last summer, we trialed on-line counselling and support. The team upskilled and put into practice working in new and (for Guy’s Gift) unchartered ways. This has been a huge success for Guy’s Gift, and we have been able to continue providing 1:1 counselling and support for bereaved children and young people across Coventry and Warwickshire.

In November, we trialed running our much loved group support sessions online too. This has enabled children and young people to come together, when there are so many limitations on this elsewhere. Children and young people have benefited from joining with other who have similar experiences and to process their grief.

These sessions are being run by our brilliant counselling and support team, with help from some of our fabulous volunteers too. Each participant in groups receives a resource kit to enable to them to join in with the group activity and to provide tangible ways to remember the person who has died.

If you’d like to find out more about our virtual groups, get in touch via our contact page.

Covid-19 Update: coming out of lockdown

As the government announcement yesterday shines some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of restrictions easing, we are also thinking about when and how we return to in-person support.

We are can’t, at this stage, with any certainty suggest when that might be possible. However, we wanted to update everyone so that you know this is something we are thinking about and we will be moving back towards in-person support as soon as we feel it is safe and appropriate to do so.

For now, don’t forget that all of our normal support options are available remotely, and we continue to meet with children and young people for 1-to-1 and groups support.

COVID-19 Update

With the latest national lockdown upon us, we want to update everyone on what this means for support from Guy’s Gift.

In short, nothing much should change. We are established and ready for working remotely. We have been doing this throughout the autumn term. The only change will be that we will carry out the session with the child or young person whilst they are at home.

The counselling and support team will be making contact with all families this week to confirm how this will work on an individual basis.

We are still taking referral as normal, and the team are available to answer queries or take those referrals between 8:30-4:30 Monday to Thursday. You can reach us by calling 0845 467 3035 or by emailing us on info@guysgift.co.uk. Alternatively, you can use our keep in touch page here on the website.

We hope that home learning goes well for all our families over the coming weeks.

2020 Christmas and New Year revised opening hours

We will be working revised hours over the Christmas and New Year period.

We have fewer staff available than normal during the last week before Christmas, however please do leave us a message and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.

We hope that you all enjoy a relaxing Christmas and New Year break.

Our 2020 'Virtual' Lantern Walk

As we draw towards the end of 2020, so our annual Lantern Walk date was approaching. With things as they are, of course we were unable to go ahead with out normal event. We thought long and hard about what we could do because it was very important to us all here at Guy’s Gift to ensure that the date didn’t go by unnoticed. So, we decided that we would deliver an online ‘virtual’ event instead.

This was achieved with the kind support of a team of volunteers from Cooperative Mid Counties who delivered a Lantern Pack to each family attending. This pack included the all important lantern so that families could head out on their own personal Lantern Walk following our event, a bauble to decorate in memory of the person who has died, and a special gift on behalf of Father Christmas.
A big thank you goes out to the volunteers who supported all the drop offs of the Lantern Packs!

We were absolutely thrilled to see so many families join us on 6th December. Families shared who they were remembering, and how they would be doing their own walk this year. Some families joined us whilst they were already on their walk too.

We want to take this opportunity to share some of the wonderful baubles that families have decorated in memory of their loved ones. We also want to share the message that despite not being able to physically spend time together this year, we have still been able to spend time with one another and take comfort in knowing that we are not alone.