The passing of a child is possibly the most traumatic loss any family can endure. At Team Jak, we understand that grief doesn’t follow a timeline: it comes in waves, and it touches every part of life, whether your loss was recent or happened many years ago.
Team Jak’s support for bereaved families is shaped by personal experience as well as compassion and community. Everything we do is aimed at providing you with space to grieve, remember, support and gently rebuild, moving forward, not on, with your precious child and their memories safely embedded within your heart.
Looking for support for your child, family, or want to refer someone you know? Please get in touch today.
Our experienced Children, Young People & Families team offers group and one-to-one emotional support for bereaved parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members. We can visit you at home, or meet you at one of our Jak’s Dens, online or over the phone. Among the support options we offer are:
Bag of Rainbows: This programme is specifically designed for bereaved children, providing age-appropriate ways to express and process their grief in a safe, creative setting.
Seasons for Growth: This is a group programme aimed at helping children, young people, and adults understand their emotions and develop strategies to cope with change and loss.
Angel Family Group: We hold monthly sessions for bereaved parents and families, offering supportive spaces for meeting others with shared experience. These take place in our Jak’s Dens in Livingston and Aberdeen, as well as online.
Annual Angel Retreat: Thanks to generous funding support, we are able to offer an annual retreat weekend where our Angel Families can take time out from the daily hustle and bustle to remember, process, share, and be supported and nourished.
Practical support: We understand that the needs of bereaved families don’t stop after the funeral. That why we offer practical support too, such as help at home, support with memorial planning, or simply providing a listening ear. For as long as it takes.
We also give the gift of a voucher to create a bear from your child’s clothing, and an invite to place a leaf on our angel tree so their name is always mentioned in Jak’s Den.
Named Funds: Some of our families choose to create a Named Fund for their precious child. They choose the name and decide what their fundraising will go towards. This is a good option for those who want to do something special for their child but don’t want to create a full-blown charity.
Remembering events: Each September, we take time to remember all our angels individually at the start of Glow Gold Childhood Cancer Awareness month. Tam Jak holds a very special ceremony at our Livingston HQ Jak’s Den where we read each child’s name, reflect with poems and music, create memory items such as a personalised candle, and enjoy a special meal together. We end the session in our Angel garden and blow bubbles to heaven.
We also remember our angels at Christmas time with our star tree ceremony and share a moment of reflection with slides of our angels at our carol concert.
We provide emotional, social and practical support to children & young people with cancer, their families, friends and those bereaved
