Dying Matters Awareness Week (8-14 May 2023)
How we’re getting the message out
This year Dying Matters is focusing on Dying Matters at Work, so it is an opportunity for organisations and teams to look at how they support their employees, and each other, through grief, caring responsibilities, or a life-limiting illness.
Stigma around grieving, and a lack of understanding about what happens when you’re dying, mean that too many of us are struggling to cope when faced with life’s inevitable challenges. And the workplace is no exception. We spend so much of our lives at work – and we shouldn’t have to hide our experiences of death and dying from our colleagues, our peers, or our bosses.
57% of employees will have experienced a bereavement in the last five years and every day, more than 600 people in the UK quit work to look after older and disabled relatives. And yet, fewer than one in five managers feel confident supporting someone they manage with a bereavement (Hospice UK, 2023)
Here at Pembridge Hospice we often support people affected by life-limiting illness to talk through the impact that their illness, or their loved-one’s illness, is having on their work-life. We sometimes help people prepare for talking to their employers, and we provide counselling to support people in coming to terms with having to stop work, or with having to juggle work and caring responsibilities.
As hospice workers, and as employees ourselves, we are really pleased that Dying Matters is focusing this year on the workplace and we share Hospice UK’s vision to create a compassionate society where we are comfortable facing the realities of dying, death and grief. But talking about this can be hard, especially with colleagues, so this Dying Matters Awareness Week, why not watch Hospice UK’s Compassionate Employers webinar entitled ‘How to Talk about Death at Work’ – a webinar that will provide practical advice on how to start workplace conversations on this often-taboo subject. The webinar takes place on Thursday 11th May 2023, 11.30 am – 12.30 pm.
And why not sign-up to Hospice UK’s Compassionate Employers email list to get bereavement and wellbeing support resources for you and your colleagues, and first access to webinars. Past webinars that you can now watch include: ‘Death In Service’ and ‘Bereavement At Work’.
If you work or live anywhere near Pembridge Hospice (St Charles Centre for Health & Wellbeing, Ladbroke Grove, W10) – then please drop-in and see us for our Dying Matters Awareness Week Drop-In
Dying Matters Awareness Week Drop-In
Pembridge Hospice (St Charles Centre for Health & Wellbeing)
Tuesday 9 May: 2.30 pm – 4.00 pm
If you are affected by anything you’ve read here, or if you want to talk further about matters relating to living with a life-limiting illness, grieving, dying and bereavement, we would be very happy to talk with you. Contact Pembridge Hospice on: 0208 102 5000 or email: clcht.pembridgeunit@nhs.net and ask to speak to a member of the social work team.
UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENTS
HOW TO HAVE LIFE CHANGING CONVERSATIONS…ABOUT THE END OF LIFE
Many of us are scared to face mortality and talk to our loved ones about it. Author and palliative medicine doctor Dr Kathryn Mannix and psychotherapist and author Julia Samuel MBE discuss how we might overcome challenges we encounter when we want to talk about death.
MAY 3RD – 18:00 UK TIME
REGISTER HERE
MUSA OKWONGA + CATHY RENTZENBRINK: IN THE END IT WAS ALL ABOUT LOVE
Writer, broadcaster and musician Musa Okwonga speaks about his work and recent novel In The End, It Was All About Love with acclaimed memoirist and author Cathy Rentzenbrink. In The End, It Was All About Love is a journey of loss and self-acceptance, sexuality and spirituality, of racism, dating, and alienation, that takes its nameless narrator from bustling Berlin to his roots in a village on the Uganda-Sudan border.
MAY 18TH – 18:00 UK TIME
REGISTER HERE