Finding your bliss is a wonderful thing, an admirable goal. But not everyone can easily find bliss, which is why there is The Grief Centre. There is no true bliss without moving through hardships and at the grief centre, we embrace the idea of helping to find the light at the end of the tunnel.
There is a crisis in our communities. The state of our youth and children’s mental health today is nothing short of alarming. Devastating really. Never before, has a generation been so confronted by such desperate circumstances than the one’s being faced by our children today. In our present society, the need to help our children has never been greater. Children have been dealing with their own depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, bullying issues and the list goes on. Then Covid struck and further exacerbated the situation. Now, adding to all of this, just imagine a child having to deal with the death of a mother, a father, a brother or a sister, while also trying to deal with their own mental health issues.
One in 14 children will experience the death of their parent or sibling by the time they turn 18. These children are in dire need of grief counselling. The reality is that 100% of us will be touched by grief at some point in our lives. As adults, we have skills and resources to search out support. This is not true for children. Children need help from professionals in the unique specialty of children’s grief counselling. There aren’t many places where these children can turn to for help and there are even fewer that provide free children’s grief counselling. This is why we need “The Grief Centre”. The Grief Centre brings hope, strength and resilience to children and their families, providing them with the tools that will help them cope with grief during their most vulnerable time and provide a healthier world.
In 2006, the Dr. Jay Children’s Grief Centre was founded. It provided the gold standard for children’s grief support. It functioned for over 15 years, helping thousand of children and their families. Unfortunately, during Covid, it closed. Before it closed, there was an 8-month waitlist for grief counselling. This closure, sadly, left an enormous void in grief services for children. This led to the creation of “The Grief Centre”. Our Vision is that “all grieving children and their families have access to grief counselling, grief programming and all available resources regardless of their economic status”. Our Mission is to provide free grief support to all children who need it.We need to fill this void now and to do it quickly.
The Grief Centre has come a long way in the past year in terms of developing the infrastructure. We have been working tirelessly to get The Grief Centre up and running and to be sustainable. We have raised some money, and we are ready to take on clients, but we also want to do everything the right way. To make our efforts sustainable, we need help. In addition to raising funds through donations and events, we need to fulfill a bigger, longer-term business plan. We need people with interest in The Grief Centre and people either directly or with connections to potential major donors, sponsorships and government grants to help us build a strong financial foundation. Currently, we have no government support and because of Covid and mental health issues in general, the need has never been greater. In short, we need Champions to clear this last hurdle and milestone. Champions who can step up with significant financial support and work to help us connect to others.
We are asking not only for your dollars, but we need you and your network to help us. We need to find new Board members, find more people for our Advisory Committee, helpers with social media, political connections, government contacts, and most important to raise funds.
If you would like to Donate, contact us, or to find out more information about The Grief Centre, please visit our website www.thegriefcentre.ca
Our charitable number is 869290924RR0001
Dr. Jay Bacher
Founder of The Dr. Jay Children’s Grief Centre
Co-Founder of The Grief Centre
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