Hi everyone, Roy McLoughlin is back, and this time we have Catherine Betley with us from Grief Chat. Grief Chat is an organisation that offers anonymous access to trained counsellors through webchat services, to help people through difficult times. Grief is a horrible thing to experience and it’s important that we are aware that there might never be acceptance of the event that has caused grief, but there can be ways to accommodate it.

You might wonder why the need for dedicated grief services are needed, and it becomes much clearer when Catherine says they had nearly 50k conversations in 2021. That is approximately 136 grief support conversations for every day of last year.

The key takeaways:

• It’s ok to not know what to say to someone experiencing grief, the important thing is to say something, show that someone cares.
• Grief counselling is different to mental health support. 
• Around 40% of Grief Chat’s webchat conversations happen with men, which is much higher than other non-anonymous routes.

Next time I have Matt Rann back with me and we are going to be chatting about Huntington’s and how this diagnosis can affect insurance applications. 

Remember, if you are listening to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on our website, thanks to our sponsors Octo Members.

If you want to know more about how to arrange protection insurance, take a look at my Protection Insurance in Practice course here.