A conference ‘Working with Loss and Bereavement’, was held on Thursday 31st October at the Mountbatten Centre in Portsmouth. This was a collaborative venture with Solent NHS and The Bereavement Centre. This was a follow up to the very successful conference held in 2012. Our aim was to get as many professionals and voluntary agencies, together to combine their expertise and wealth of knowledge.
The Portsmouth Lord Mayor, Lynne Stagg, walked around the exhibition stands and met the exhibitors before officially opening the conference. The cost was £10 to attend the conference, with a £1,000 going to the Lord Mayors Appeal.
We had attendees from places like QA Hospital, Nursing Homes, The Rowans, Victim Support, Age UK, to name a few, we also had fourteen exhibition stands and five speakers. Paul Beadon, from the Rowans Hospice, set the scene for the day, talking about bereavement and mindfulness. Followed by speakers from Off the Record, a representative from the Muslim Community, Ken Newman, Sector Manager for The Co-operative Funeralcare and Father Bob White.
Not only were the Bereavement Centre’s team there to help but so were staff from the Co-operative Funeralcare, Beverly Downie Funeral Co-ordinator from the Fratton branch. Gary Orchard, helped with the technical side, making sure the presentations went well and Janet Quintavalle helped man the exhibition stand. Ingrid McAllister-Derry hosted the event with Sarah Tollast from Solent NHS.
We would just like to say a big thank you to everyone who helped, especially Teresa Williams, Events Co-ordinator and Sophie Boxall, Press and Publicity Co-ordinator from Southern Co-operatives. Also I would like to thank Stephen Pearce, Chief Operating Officer and Graham Lymn, Head of Operations, for their help and support and all the Area Operating Managers, thank you all.
What an amazing day, it was wonderful to listen to all of these speakers and interact with each other. We now need to look at the feedback on the evaluation forms and evaluate the day. 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
