Children's Grief Awareness Week is a national week of reflection and awareness, created by bereavement organisations across the UK to collectively campaign for bereaved children and their families. To raise awareness of the needs AND the services available.

To understand the severity of the problem we have listed below some statistics, published by The Childhood Bereavement Network.

How many parents die each year, leaving dependent children?

We estimate that around 26,900 parents die each year in the UK, leaving dependent children. That's one parent every 20 minutes. These estimates are averages for the last three years (2019-2021).

How many children are bereaved of a parent each year?

We estimate that these parents left behind around 46,300 dependent children aged 0-17 each year. That's 127 newly bereaved children every day.

How many children in the current population have been bereaved of a parent?

By the age of 16, 4.7 per cent or around 1 in 20 young people will have experienced the death of one or both of their parents (Parsons, 2011).

A parent of children under 18 dies every 22 minutes in the UK; around 23,600 a year. This equates to around 111 children being bereaved of a parent every day.

1 in 29 5-16 year olds has been bereaved of a parent or sibling - that's a child in every average class.