About Winston's Wish
The vision of Winston's Wish is that all bereaved children will receive the support they need. Its mission is to provide:
- high quality bereavement services to children, young people and their families; and to the community through parental and peer support, training, education and research
- a safe, yet creative environment for those who are mourning the death of a family member
Winston's Wish offers a holistic approach to child bereavement. It has a wide range of services that support many thousands of families each year, as well as providing support to the community in a wider sense, for example health professionals, teachers, social workers etc.
The charity has received several awards for its services including the BT/Childline Award for Outstanding Services to Children, The Guardian Jerwood Award for Community Achievement and recently a Plain English Award for its publication, As Big As It Gets-Supporting a Child when Someone in their Family is Seriously Ill.
Its services include:
National Family Line
national helpline offering guidance & information
Publications and Resources
helping families & those supporting them
Interactive Website
aimed at young people (12-18), but also responding to a general audience
Training/workshops
for professionals who support bereaved families
Tailored consultancy/education packages
to enable others to develop locally based child bereavement organisations
Where appropriate, its ‘direct’ support can include:
Home visits
to assess the needs of each family
Support for children
when a family member is dying
Residential Camp Winston
for children (4-18)
Simultaneous weekends
for parents and carers
Social activities
to maintain friendships made at Camp
Individual work
when grief is complicated
Specialist support
for those affected by suicide, murder
A support programme for schools
Our history
Winston's Wish is a charity that supports children following the death of a mother, father, brother or sister. It began in 1992 out of concern for children whose parents were referred to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital’s Palliative Care Team.
The founder and current Chief Executive, Julie Stokes, who was working at the time as a Clinical Psychologist in the Palliative Care Team, realised that there was little or no support for children when their parent was dying and that children understood death very differently from adults.
She identified a need to provide a service to children to support them through their bereavement and was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship that allowed her to travel to America and Canada to observe models of child bereavement services.
On her return to the UK, she founded Winston's Wish and developed a pioneering community based approach to supporting bereaved children and families. Winston's Wish has now developed to offer a wide range of innovative services and now supports many thousands of children and their families/carers per year, as well as providing support to professionals.
It has been awarded several prizes for its services including the BT/Childline Award for Outstanding Services to Children, The Guardian Jerwood Award for Community Achievement and most recently a Plain English Award for two of its publications, As Big As It Gets and Beyond the Rough Rock.
After ten years, Winston's Wish is recognised as a leading authority on the provision of child bereavement services across the UK, is involved in policy development for standards of best practice in bereavement services and is the largest provider of bereavement services for children in Europe.