Useful Books for Children
Talking to Children about Death and Dying
By Mary Turner
A popular resource designed to help adults talk to bereaved children and young people. Mary Turner explains the various aspects and stages of bereavement and offers useful insights into the concerns of children experiencing grief or facing an imminent bereavement.
By Michael Rosen
It chronicles Michael’s grief at the death of his son Eddie from meningitis at the age of 19. A moving combination of sincerity and simplicity, it acknowledges that sadness is not always avoidable or reasonable and perfects the art of making complicated feelings plain.
By Patrice Karst
Parents, educators, therapists, and social workers alike have declared The Invisible String the perfect tool for coping with all kinds of separation anxiety, loss, and grief.
By Jayde Perkin
Mum’s Jumper is a lovely story on a difficult topic of loss and grief. It is the story of a young girl who struggles to understand death after the loss of her mother.
Website Links
The website links I have included below I hope you will find useful. I found victim support were such a great source of support to me, especially in the early few months. Some of the other sites are a bit more specific and will depend on your situation but AAFDA were particularly great and they can provide support, advocacy and knowledge around the domestic homicide review and help you to ensure your voice is heard.
I hate the fact anyone else will need these sites but I really do hope they can be of some help to you and ease just a little of that stress.
Victim Support
Victim Support is an independent charity dedicated to supporting victims of crime and traumatic incidents in England and Wales. They provide specialist help to support people to cope and recover to the point where they feel they are back on track with their lives.
The Good Grief Trust
All staff at the Good Grief Trust have lost someone they love, so they want to help you find the support you need as quickly as possible. You will find stories from others who have had a similar loss, practical and emotional support and signposting to a choice of immediate tailored local and national support on each of our pages below.
Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse
Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA) are a Centre of Excellence for reviews after domestic homicide. They provide specialist and expert advocacy and specialist peer support to families and friends bereaved by domestic homicide, domestic abuse related suicides and unexplained deaths. They work on behalf of families and friends to ensure their loved one’s voice is heard.
We are heavily involved in the ‘Killed Women Campaign’, a charity which has been set up to ensure justice for all the women’s whose lives that have been lost at the hands of men.
“We have come together through our own personal grief to be a voice for lost women and their families. We want to change the perception that these deaths and injustices are unavoidable tragedies to be expected and accepted. They are not.
This network of families, of different backgrounds and experiences, wants to collectively campaign to:
– better protect all women from the most extreme forms of violence;
– ensure justice for those whose lives are lost;
– improve the support and rights of the families left behind, especially children.”
source: https://www.killedwomen.org/about
If you have lost a relative due to targeted violence and would like to be part of this campaign group, let us know here.
Support children and young people after the death of a parent or sibling
This organisation provides a signposting website for anyone bereaved and those supporting them
This organisation campaigns alongside families and others to access the truth, hold those responsible to account and effect meaningful change to prevent future deaths.
INQUEST provides expertise on state related deaths and their investigation to bereaved people, lawyers, advice and support agencies, the media and parliamentarians. Specialist casework includes deaths in police and prison custody, immigration detention, mental health settings and deaths involving multi-agency failings or where wider issues of state and corporate accountability are in question.
Is a wonderful Birmingham based organisation. Who help children, young people and families who have been affected by loss, bereavement, divorce or separation and domestic abuse. If you have faced any of these difficulties we offer support to help you work through your challenges to achieve emotional wellbeing and hope for a healthy future. Our counsellors and play therapists help children and young people come to terms with their loss and give them tools to cope with changes in their lives.
Unfortunately they currently only work with 4-18 year olds who live in Birmingham or attend a Birmingham school
Practical information for families affected by mental health homicides in Britain.
This organisation provides ‘lived experience peer support’ for those affected by suicide, murder or negative mental health experiences.
Financial Support
Do you know you don’t have to pay for the funeral of a child under the age of 18?
The Children’s Funeral Fund for England was established to ensure no parent will have to pay for their child’s burial or cremation.
The following links provides you with all the details you need
Support for child funeral costs (Children’s Funeral Fund for England) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Useful Information
Statistics on firearm and shotgun certificates in England and Wales: April 2021 – April 2022
In 2020, 1 woman or girl was killed every 11 minutes at the hands of someone in their family
Poems and Inspirational Quotes
