The Arsenal Foundation has helped to fund north London’s CCIWBS Bereavement Service, which offers counselling for adults who have experienced loss. Counsellor David, who lives in Camden, tells us about their invaluable work.
“Very nearly half of our clients are from Islington, and sadly we have a high rate of clients who come to us because of death through violent crime and suicide.
“I see three clients every week on Tuesday evenings. Generally each client gets ten or 12 sessions and we can normally achieve very real progress in that time. We also run Natural Grief Walks, which involves a group of bereaved adults walking and talking with two counsellors on Hampstead Heath for two hours a week over five weeks, and we encourage the groups to continue once the formal sessions have ended.
“People often come with a great jumble of emotions and they are therefore often confused and anxious, thinking that this means that they’re going mad or they’re doing something wrong.
“It is tremendously helpful simply being able to reassure them that bereavement can be a deeply confusing experience which may include periods of numbness, of deep sorrow, of anxiety, of anger and then periods of normality or even happiness, which can then make them sometimes inappropriately guilty. All of this can be talked through slowly and openly and that can have really profound benefits.
“It is also helpful for people to understand that a bereavement may be particularly difficult if it is a younger person who has died, if there has been a sudden and traumatic death or if there has been a long, drawn-out death. Bereavement by suicide is often extremely difficult to process but that is something that, sadly, we have now a lot of experience of.
“It is of course challenging but also profoundly satisfying to help people in this way and to have the benefit of the experience of the service. The ongoing training and the supervision is highly professional but still remains at a local human level. All of the service’s 46 counsellors are volunteers but we are all trained and supervised. We see 390 clients each year. The overheads are kept very low but our income from funders has been reduced in recent times, so the donation from The Arsenal Foundation has helped us to continue our work.
“Football is not only known as a place of very significant wealth but also of role models for many people. The support of Arsenal for our service sends a very healthy message, especially to young people, and in particular men, whose mental health is often very vulnerable and who fail to seek support when it would really help.”
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