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Bereavement Coaching Programme

Our Coaching Programme has been carefully designed with bereaved oncology parents in mind. The aim of the programme is to enhance your physical, mental, emotional, and social wellbeing, and to support you in fulfilling your potential after the loss of your child. How a parent reacts to bereavement is individual and everyone grieves differently.

Thanks to incredibly positive feedback from participants in last year’s programme, we are proud to be running the programme again. We have expanded it to include other rare cancer types so that more parents can benefit and in collaboration with Alice’s Arc, we warmly invite parents affected by neuroblastoma or rhabdomyosarcoma to join us.

This six-week group programme is free to access, and we actively encourage feedback from all participants. The programme will begin on Wednesday 7th January 2026. Topics included for coaching in bereavement are:

  • Connection
  • Self-care
  • New normal
  • Relationships
  • Work and purpose
  • Honouring my child. Not just remembering

Spaces are limited on this six-week group programme and you can sign up below. 

Sign up

If you do not secure a place in this programme, you will be placed on the priority list for access to the next available programme. Registration closes on 18th December 2025.

Course time and date

All sessions run from 12pm - 2pm on the following dates:

  • Wednesday 7th January
  • Wednesday 14th January
  • Wednesday 21st January
  • Wednesday 28th January
  • Wednesday 4th February 
  • Wednesday 11th February 

Coaching participants will be required to commit to the full programme, and we can provide a letter for your employers if this would be helpful in encouraging them to give you the time to increase your wellbeing.

Location 

The sessions will be held online and you will receive a virtual meeting link before the course starts.  

Please note that to assess the effectiveness of this programme we will be asking participants to complete a short anonymous survey before starting and after completion of the course using a recognised, validated tool called the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. 

For more detailed information about the programme please see below and if you have any questions, please contact our Family Support Team: Hayley Blackwell at hayley@solvingkidscancer.org.uk or Vicky Inglis at vicky@solvingkidscancer.org.uk, who will both be present in the workshop as life coaches. Natalie Carpenter a Alice’s Arc Trustee and Chartered educational, Child and adolescent, community psychologist will also be present to support.

Workshop content

Workshop 1: Connections
Throughout your child’s treatment, you would have made various connections with others going through a similar experience and had different outlets to express your thoughts/feelings. For bereaved parents, it can feel difficult to connect and share experiences with others who haven’t lost a child. This can lead to feelings of isolation.

Workshop 1 gives you the safe space to connect and share your story with others who will listen and understand. A space to pause, process and check in with yourself. We will take part in a guided head to toe meditation, learn how to understand and express our feelings and reflect. Workshop 1 is the session before you start to process and move forward.

Workshop 2: Self-care
After a life-changing event, beliefs change, values change and priorities change. Are you building a resourceful state? During this workshop, we introduce you to you. You will take some time for an identity check-in. You will clarify who you are, what's important to you and what you want in life. During this workshop, you will identify what your resourceful state is and what you need to create this. You will also create your own personal self-care plan. You’ll leave with clarity around what you need in order to feel 100%, you’ll be given a self-care plan and some actions that will support you to feel your best and help you to be kinder and gentler with yourself.

Workshop 3: New normal
For many individuals, life after cancer can feel as though their pre-diagnosis goals and visions no longer align with who they are after the cancer journey ends. In this workshop we will use visioning to explore our identity and clarify our values. We will take a look at where we are now and where we'd like to be before starting to make plans for the future, keeping in mind that it may include a little more uncertainty than we would like it to. You will leave with an overview of how satisfied you are with your life, clarity around areas of your life that you'd like to change and a vision of what you'd like your life post cancer and in bereavement to look and feel like.

Workshop 4: Relationships
In Workshop 4 we will explore the relationships we have with our partner and friends. Many bereaved parents identify that they are not the same person as they were before and relationships can change or disappear. We will explore your internal dialogue, create habits to support your relationship and practice modelling and changing perspective.

Workshop 5: Work & Purpose
Sometimes parents may take a career break after the loss of their child. Maybe you’ve returned to work but things just no longer feel the same. Today we will explore what your post-cancer work life in bereavement looks like. We will make steps towards finding our purpose and clarify confidence tools.

We take a look at what our internal dialogue is saying to us, the language we're using - words affect the way we feel about ourselves, are we being kind to our mind? You will leave the workshop feeling more in control of your inner critics with a greater awareness that will support you to practice being a little bit kinder to yourself.

Workshop 6: Honouring my child. Not just remembering…
We will dedicate Workshop 6 in memory of your child. We will explore the importance of in memory and how steps in moving forwards are not about leaving your child behind. We will explore ways you can/do remember your child. During this workshop we define what surviving means to you as a parent and identify what you need to transition to thriving on a scale that is meaningful to you as an individual. Using the power of positive language, you will describe your child and identify ways of making steps to incorporating these words into your goal setting.