A conference ‘Exploring Loss’, was held on Thursday 30th October 2014 at the Portsmouth Academy for Girls, in Portsmouth. This was a collaborative venture with Solent NHS and The Bereavement Centre. Our aim was to get as many professionals and voluntary agencies, together to combine their expertise and wealth of knowledge. The idea was to network with as many people as we could and for people to see how we support the communities we service.
The Bereavement Centre which started in 2000, is open to anyone in the community and offers bereavement support and educational sessions, Free of charge. The Bereavement Centre is proud to be able to help and support the areas they serve.
The Portsmouth Lord Mayor, Steven Wylie, walked around the exhibition stands and met the exhibitors before officially opening the conference. The conference was a non-profit conference and after covering costs, a donation of £400 went to the Lord Mayors Appeal.
We had attendees from places like QA Hospital, Nursing Homes, The Rowans, Age UK, to name a few, we also had sixteen exhibition stands and three speakers. Paul Beadon, from the Rowans Hospice, set the scene for the day, talking about bereavement. Followed by Ken Newman, Sector Manager for The Co-operative Funeralcare and Father Bob White. We also had workshops in the afternoon, some of the topics covered were, suicide, supporting people with learning disabilities, mindfulness and much more.
What an amazing day, it was wonderful to listen to all of these speakers and interact with each other. This was the first time we had workshops in the afternoon and the feedback was very positive, we now have a lot people who are aware of what is under the umbrella of Southern Co-operatives and how we don’t just talk about supporting the community, we actually do make a difference in the communities we service and are very proud of it. I hope this is not the end but just the beginning, a lot of hard work has gone into the conference, and I hope that there will be many more to come.
Regards
Ingrid McAllister-Derry
The Bereavement Centre Manager