Community-led program Compassionate Sheffield have said a £400,000 five year funding scheme will allow them to continue to support people with their experiences of death and bereavement.
Compassionate Sheffield, established in 2021, aims to create safe-spaces for people to explore their feelings and knowledge of bereavement, grief and loss. They also offer targeted support to those experiencing health and wellbeing inequalities across the city.
The funding from Sheffield City Council, which was confirmed on Monday February 3, will allocate £80,000 annually from the Public Health Grant to Compassionate Sheffield to support their programme.
Cally Bowman, Community Engagement & Communication officer for Compassionate Sheffield, said: “Whether we have a life limiting condition ourselves, or we are experiencing loss in our own lives, either personally or through supporting loved ones who are navigating grief.
“We can all benefit from growing confidence in how to access support and how to support each other.”
The community driven programme offers specific support such as workshops on understanding grief and collaborating with Mosques to offer regular men’s discussion groups about topics surrounding death.
Ms Bowman added: “ We want to empower people, organisations and communities to grow their confidence, capability and capacity to open more conversations about life, loss and death. This helps remove stigma and enable more people to talk and access support.”
They have also facilitated ‘death cafes,’ a supported environment for people to discuss topics surrounding death as well as for underrepresented groups such as unpaid carers, the neurodivergent and the LGBTQ+ communities.
Yvonne Tulloch, CEO of At a Loss charity, said: “What a lot of people do is they stiff up the lip and bravely carry on but then they don’t process their losses, their bereavement, their grief, then it will have negative effects upon them physically, mentally, emotionally.”
At a loss offers support across 400 churches in the UK, including South Yorkshire through their “Bereavement journey” initiative.
Compassionate Sheffield are currently working on plans for their Sheffield Life, Loss and Death Festival in May 2025, with 15 free events.