Moral injury – are funeral directors in the firing line?

From March 2020, psychologists began to publish warnings that medical staff working through the height of the pandemic, perhaps faced with difficult choices and almost certainly higher patient mortality than usual, should watch for and guard against the symptoms of what they called ‘moral injury’. They warned that if left unchecked, it could lead to…

Read More

Working with the dead – the funeral profession

In a normal year, it’s expected that there would be around 600,000 deaths in the UK but, as we know all too well, 2020 has not been a normal year. One of the sectors pushed to new limits this year by COVID-19, is the funeral profession. Funeral directors and their staff have been severely tested…

Read More

The funeral profession: the frontline nobody is talking about

In these extraordinary and troubling times, a lot of attention is (rightly) being paid to the ‘frontline’ services – those people who can’t work from home, who are working in our hospitals, our schools, pharmacies, food supply chain, postal service and more, to keep the country operating – often at great risk to themselves. As…

Read More

Keeping A Distance? The pros and cons of remote counselling

Written by Joanna Williams, Head of Counselling at Professional Help. Mention counselling and most people have an idea of what it looks like. Many have experienced it: two people in the same room, the client sharing their problems by vocalising them, client and counsellor working together to find a way through. In light of the…

Read More

New Year, New You?

It’s January. The excess, the parties, the catching up with family and friends over a bite to eat or a few drinks (or both!) is done for now and many of us find ourselves in the position where we have a few pounds to lose and possibly a few bad habits as well. You may…

Read More

The Value of Good Bereavement Care

I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of my time these days talking about costs. I’m often asked about cost even before I’ve started to explain our services – how we work and what the benefits to our clients are. But “how much does it cost?” (to have a helpline service, a…

Read More

World Mental Health Day 2019: Your mental health MOT

By Joanna Williams, Head of Counselling at Professional Help. ‘Prevention is better than cure’. It’s an old adage, and one that we’re now beginning to apply to mental health as well as physical. The World Federation for Mental Health has decided that the theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day should be Suicide Prevention,…

Read More

Online counselling and the GriefChat service

By Catherine Betley, Managing Director of Professional Help and founder of GriefChat. After a significant loss, bereaved people have traditionally been supported by their communities, their religious or social groups and their friends and family. Some 60 years ago, one of the first bereavement care services in the world, Cruse Bereavement Care, was launched to…

Read More

#FiveThings

I was recently asked to write about five things I wish people knew about grief, by the wonderful lifedeathwhatever.com who are working to open up conversations about death and dying. Their campaign, #FiveThings is a collection of the five things that Life. Death. Whatever. collaborators want people to know about life, death and everything in…

Read More

Grieving on Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day can be an unwelcome time of year for a lot of people. If you’re estranged from your mother or don’t have a good relationship; if you are having difficulty with fertility; and of course, if you are grieving the loss of a mother or a child, or supporting children who have lost their…

Read More