Bereavement Service

When someone close to us dies, many people suffer the pain of loss and grief during the time of bereavement. There is no short cut to the journey of bereavement, despite our community tends to encourage the bereaved to put aside their grief and look forward. The impact of loss on the bereaved involves various aspect including emotions, health, life value, family, finance, work, interpersonal etc. It really takes time for the bereaved to cope with all the challenges and adjust to the life without the deceased.

In view of the significant impact of loss and death on the family, Bradbury Hospice extends our devoted care to the families after the death of patients of our hospital. Through the provision of following services, we hope to be a supportive companion of our bereaved families, help them deal with their emotions, and establish strength and confidence in carrying on their lives.

Bereavement counseling and support

Counselling in bereavement involves helping people accept and adjust to their loss and experience the pain of grief in an atmosphere of acceptance and understanding. Through the provision of telephone contact, home visit and interview, bereaved people are helped to find strength and confidence within themselves, to identify and utilize personal and community resources in order to adapt to the life without the deceased.

Bereavement group

In the time of grief, people may prefer to talk to someone who has also suffered the loss of a loved person. They often feel that only someone who has actually 'been through it and survived could possibly understand. Planning and organizing bereavement groups therefore is one of the emphasis of our bereavement service. The bereavement groups we organize include:

Under the same sky (Bereavement Drop-in Group)

This group has been set up for more than ten years. We got the idea during our previous visit to overseas hospice. This bereavement group adopts an open group approach, which can facilitate respecting and meeting the pace of different bereaved people. Group members meet every three weeks and they are free to decide when to join the group and when to terminate their engagement in accordance with their own needs and pace. This group has attracted many bereaved families to join and brought great help and support to different members.

Develop volunteer team for bereavement service

Establishing volunteer team to help bereavement service has been the new direction of our hospice in the past few years. At the beginning, we target at recruitment of professional people including social workers and nurses to provide bereavement support to the bereaved. While volunteers are serving our bereaved families, we will provide them with necessary training, consultation and supervision for better support and ensuring service quality.

Recently, we start to extend our volunteer team by involving families who have gone through their bereavement and other interested people. With different experiences and strength of our volunteer team, we hope to provide our bereaved with more comprehensive service.

Publication/Education materials

Booklet about bereaved children

The booklet is a practical tool to help adults support grieving children. It talks about how to explain death to children and how to encourage children to express their emotions. Every bereaved family with young children will get one booklet.

Funeral pamphlet

The pamphlet is produced to provide families with financial information and guidelines concerning funeral arrangement.

Sympathy card / Leaflet on coping with grief

The sympathy card and the leaflet on coping with grief are the basic materials we will send to every bereaved family. We hope families know we are concerned about them and they are welcome

Bereavement training and education

Bradbury Hospice regards providing bereavement training and education to the community as an essential means to promote understanding on the needs of bereaved, eventually more people will know how to support the bereaved and cope with bereavement in a more constructive way. We have been giving assistance in bereavement training and education throughout the past number of years.