Award from The National Lottery Community Fund

We are thrilled to share with you the news of a fabulous donation of £460,624 spread over three years, from The National Lottery Community Fund which enables us to continue our support of bereaved children and young people across Coventry and Warwickshire.

This fund also allows us to grow additional areas of support, and we'll be listening to the voices of those accessing Guy's Gift to know what our local community want from us.

Back in October 2021, a group of our volunteers joined us in celebrating this award, and we were able to start talking with our team about what happens next. Rest assured, all the things you love about Guy’s Gift will be continuing, but with a larger team and new projects on the way!

We look forward to sharing more updates on this project with you all over the coming months, so keep an eye on our website and social media platforms to see how you might be able to get involved too.

Bereavement Support Groups 2022

We are very much looking forward to meeting everyone joining our Bereavement Support Group this afternoon.

This is our first group sessions running in 2022, and we have returned online this time. We have in-person sessions planned for later in the year too.

Groups are a great way for children and young people to meet with others who have experienced a bereavement, in a safe and understanding environment. We know just how powerful it can be to recognise that you’re not the only person dealing with bereavement, and our group sessions are a great way to navigate this.

Sessions are run for younger children and teenagers separately, to ensure different age groups feel comfortable with activities and conversations that take place. Alongside this, some of our very experienced volunteers facilitate a space for parents/carers to come together too.

If joining our groups (virtual or in-person) sounds like something that would help you, then please get in touch with us (contact info available here) to find out more.

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.

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