Bereavement Counselling
At Teddy's Wish, we believe that all parents should have access to high quality support, following the death of their baby. This is vital in making the first tentative steps towards rediscovering hope.
TURNING TRAGEDY INTO PURPOSE
We set up Teddy’s Wish to give hope, help and support to other grieving families and to fund research into the causes of baby loss. As a small, volunteer-run charity, we’re driven by doing something meaningful in Edward’s honour. Our vision is that in the future, there will be no more grieving parents of tiny, perfect babies. Together with your support and generosity, we believe that vision is achievable.
Supporting Parents
Losing a child to SIDS, stillbirth or neonatal death is devastating and traumatic. All families suffer extreme and bewildering emotions.
As our Patron Jenni Thomas so eloquently said, “there is no wrong response, everything a parent feels is the most natural of responses to the most unnatural of events”.
Following the loss of a child, parents may find themselves feeling isolated because friends and family members are unable to fully empathise and understand the pain and depth of the loss.
Grieving parents find it hard to make sense of the world around them and suffer post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Left unchecked, parents can experience ongoing and painful repercussions long after the loss of their child.
Teddy's Wish funds a counselling support service, which is free of charge to parents who have lost a baby to stillbirth (from 24 weeks), neonatal death or SIDS. The counselling sessions are for parents who are in the early months of their grief, up until 18 months post loss . All of our counsellors are BACP accredited. We also work in partnership with other baby loss charities to provide bereavement support for families to give parents the strength they need to rebuild their life again.
Celine Pearson,
Clinical Lead & Bereavement Counsellor
Celine Pearson worked in the NHS for over 35 years and has a BSc Hons in Nursing with Oncology from the Royal Marsden Hospital and Royal College of Nursing.
Over the last 20 years, she has built up extensive experience in palliative care and bereavement support for families and individuals.
Celine is a qualified counsellor, experienced at working with parents who have experienced SIDS, stillbirth and neonatal death. She also has experience working with bereaved siblings.
Erica Stewart,
Bereavement Counsellor
Erica is a qualified counsellor, and a training and support group facilitator. She has over 25 years specialist knowledge and experience, working for a leading charity supporting bereaved parents and families when their baby or child has died.
As part of her role as Bereavement Support and Awareness Specialist, Erica delivered Bereavement Care training to NHS health
professionals and various mental health agencies.
Erica has also worked as an advisor to writers and researchers for popular TV drama’s that portrayed the death of a baby.
Siobhan Poole,
Bereavement Counsellor
Siobhan is a former midwife and has been a qualified counsellor for over 16 years, having gained her masters degree in psychotherapy at the CCPE in London.
Siobhan believes that our physical, emotional and spintual aspects to ourselves are inextricably linked and considers all of these factors in her work. She also has experience of working with other bereaved parents at a previous neonatal loss charity and specialises in working with trauma.
Naomi Landau,
Bereavement Counsellor
Naomi has been a qualified counsellor for 18 years and gained a masters degree in integrative psychotherapy from the Minster Centre in 2012. She has worked for several charities as well as in private practice. She has also been a trustee of a charity supporting women and men experiencing anxiety or depression in the perinatal period.
In addition to working with bereaved parents after the death of a baby, she has considerable experience of working with clients going through fertility treatment. She has worked for a number of years as a therapist for a charity where many clients have experienced complex trauma.
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Helena Cook,
Bereavement Counsellor
Helena is a fully trained psychodynamic psychotherapist and counsellor with over 10 years’ experience in running her own private practice. She specialises in a wide range of peri-natal issues, including the loss of a baby and infertility challenges. Issues of bereavement, complex grief and anxiety feature strongly in her work with individuals and couples on a wide range of life challenges and personal difficulties.
Helena has also worked for several years in an NHS counselling service attached to the maternity and gynaecology departments of a large London teaching hospital. Here she encountered many different aspects of baby loss, pregnancy complications, birth trauma, miscarriage and infertility experienced by wide range of clients from different ethnic, religious and socio-economic backgrounds.