Posted bydaniellegoonetilleke

Guest Blog – Harry’s Rainbow sharing more about Children’s Grief Awareness Week (18th -25th November)

We have been joined by Harry’s Rainbow a local charity that supports children and young adults bereaved of a parent or sibling. Here they share their work, insights into the upcoming Grief Awareness Week & how you can stay up to date with them – Thank you to Harry’s Rainbow for sharing with us.

We have just celebrated our 10th birthday and in this time we have supported over 480 children. Along with offering direct support through our Rainbow groups, we are keen to raise awareness of the experience that our families have. One way of doing this is through supporting campaigns like Children’s Grief Awareness Week.

We believe we will be up 25% on last years figures for the number of children registered, meaning that we may register 100 children by the end of the year. There is a clear need for support and connecting families together, you can follow us through our social media channels just search ‘Harry’s Rainbow’ on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn then you will see updates on there, alongside videos and photos from fundraising events. Keep an eye on the website too!

Unfortunately, children’s grief is not something that is spoken about in the wider world, even though 1 in 29 children aged 5 – 16 will experience the death of a parent or sibling (Child Bereavement UK, 2016). With the

1 in 29 children will experience the death of a parent or sibling

Child Bereavement UK, 2016

Children’s Grief Awareness Week aims to change that. It is in it’s 7th year and was founded by leading childhood bereavement charity Grief Encounter. This year it runs from the 18th – 25th November. There are multiple charity partners now involved to raise the awareness of how support for these children can make a real difference to their lives and their futures. We ran various events and activities in the previous years and are looking forward to raising awareness this year – you can take a look at what we did in 2019 here.

44,000 children a bereaved of a parent annually in the UK

Children’s Grief Awareness Week

Local charities such as ourselves join in, spreading awareness through social media posts and our ‘wear a rainbow’ event where we ask local businesses, organisations, schools and individuals to wear a rainbow, bake a cake, make a donation and help us to raise awareness and support these bereaved children.

You can find out more information about this years Children’s Grief Awareness Week.

Follow us & get involved

We are also recruiting new trustees for our board and Odette is creating an events team to organise our grand ball next year (Our 10th Birthday celebrations!) If you’re interested in finding out about these roles please do get in touch with Odette – odette@harrysrainbow.co.uk We would love to hear from you.