Bereavement affects everyone and can have a devastating effect on emotional, physical and mental health. Cruse support helps people understand their feelings,
develop coping strategies, and return to every-day life, while remembering and celebrating the lives of those who have died.

Cruse Bereavement Support is the leading national charity for bereaved people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. At Cruse we offer a range of support services to meet the individual needs of all bereaved people, including, Cruse chat, national helpline, individual support, group support, CYP support, understanding your bereavement events, email support, and telephone support.

As a trained bereavement volunteer, you could be offering ongoing help to adults, children and young people individually or in groups.

Essential qualities of a bereavement volunteer:

• Empathetic, approachable and warm
• Reliable and trustworthy
• A proactive approach to self-care
• Open to receiving feedback
• Self-reflective approach to learning and development

Volunteers need to be comfortable talking about death and grief. Due to the nature of the subject and the clients we support, along with ourcommitment to volunteer wellbeing, we are unable to accept applications from those who have been bereaved in the past two years.

Route to becoming a bereavement volunteer:

• Application
• Pre-course interview
• Training
• Post-course interview

DBS check

What we offer our volunteers:

1. Robust training – preparing you with the skills and knowledge required to support bereaved people. Our bereavement support foundation course is recognised by the national counselling society.
2. CPD opportunities – these range from training to work with children and young people (criteria applies), understanding and supporting clients bereaved by dementia, and more.
3. Monthly group supervision with an internally trained supervisor.

Interested?

For further information or to request a volunteer application pack email wales.training@cruse.org.uk