IN A SOCIETY in which bereavement and grief are perceived to be “hidden away, unspoken, and misunderstood”, a church-run bereavement course is having a “profound and wide-reaching impact on adults of all ages”, an independent evaluation has concluded.
The Bereavement Journey, run by the Christian charity AtaLoss, is “addressing a national need for bereavement support”, the report says, and is “ideal for the significant majority — 85-90 per cent — of bereaved people who do not require or will not benefit from a clinical intervention”.
AtaLoss was founded in 2016 by the Revd Yvonne Tulloch, a former Canon for Mission at Coventry Cathedral, whose husband died suddenly in 2008 (Features, 19 October 2018). In an introduction to the report, she writes: “We are a society where people have grown up not expecting death and where we have lost the art of support.”
The course — comprising seven sessions of films and peer-group discussion — is currently run by churches in more than 400 communities across the UK. It was originally devised by a grief counsellor, Jane Oundjian, and delivered for many years in its original form at Holy Trinity, Brompton, before being re-published by AtaLoss in September 2023, with training, step-by-step instructions, and the requirement for counsellor oversight. Alongside the course is a website that signposts other sources of support.
The independent evaluation was carried out by Dr Becky Ward, of Youthrive Research Consultancy, who looked at 370 courses delivered locally between April 2023 and March 2025, and seven others delivered nationally online. Feedback was obtained from 214 course leaders and 439 participants.
Almost all (96 per cent) said that the course had “helped them to understand why they were feeling the way they were and how their bereavement was affecting them”. A total of 93 per cent said that it had helped them to “cope better with their bereavement”, and 95 per cent said that it had “helped them to process their loss”.
Dr Ward writes: “The most important aspect of the course, which was repeated again and again, was the support of the group, of people that understood their feelings and were walking the same path together. Participants talked about their friends and family wanting to change the subject or avoid conversations — perhaps through fear of not knowing what to say or saying the wrong thing — and how the mutual support of the group helped them to keep going to the course, even when they did not want to go out.”
In total, 79 per cent of all participants, from a variety of faith or no-faith backgrounds, attended the optional final session on faith. Ninety-five per cent said that they found the session to be helpful.
“Although some course leaders were hesitant over the faith session, participants were overwhelmingly positive,” Dr Ward writes. “Their responses varied according to differing faith perspectives, but they described a general sense of comfort from Session 7, in which they benefited from considering questions of faith and praying, even when they had difficult feelings.”
