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As Charlies-Angel-Centre Foundation turned 6 this week and we take a look back at where we started, we have come a long way, when we decided to start a charity we had only one thing in mind, to make sure bereaved parents & families had support if and when they needed it.
I am sure none of us realized at the beginning how complicated and how much work was involved, as we have all ways said we are just a normal family who were thrown into the world of bereavement.
In May 2013 we launched
Charlies-Angel-Centre our goals were to
offer support Via our website, email or phone, somewhere for bereaved parents to talk and to have there voice heard,
we quickly realized that more was needed, waiting times for counselling were long, support was not there when needed from professionals.
we campaigned hard and wrote to Mp's bugged our local CCG, annoyed our local hospitals and then we decided we can do this ourselves, we set about looking at what was needed, put out a survey to see what people thought was wrong with the system and what changes were needed, we hoped that if we had helped just one family then we were doing something right. we never dreamed that over the last 6 years we would have helped over 75,000 families, we average on a weekly basis 15,000 new visits to our website
We now offer
Home visits
Bereavement counselling
Bereavement packs
Community support group
Male only social group
Support via our website
Email & Telephone support
We have 25 male and female counselors
12 trustees and 6 volunteers
We take referrals from professionals and self-referrals.
We do not believe any bereaved parent should have to wait for bereavement
counselling or support, our average waiting time is 7 days from referral to
either a home visit appointment or bereavement counselling appointment.
Our aim has always been to open a Bereavement Centre that is open 24 hours
a day 7 days a week, that will provide relevant information, bereavement
counsellors and support so bereaved parents and families can access the
bereavement support they need, when they need it. this year we will be opening our first bereavement centre and we will be giving more updates on this in the coming months.
As a charity we are not funded and we rely on fundraising to keep our services going and we have been so lucky that lots of lovely people fund raise for us and we can't thank them all enough.
Even thou at times things can be tough and we feel we are out of our depth we muddle through and keep going and know we have created a charity and a service that helps bereaved parent and families,
Charlies-Angel-Centre Foundation
Registered charity number 1172233
Thank you for all of your support