A hug in a box

Alex Gough is the CEO and Founder of Take Our Hand, a national bereavement charity supporting young people aged 16-25. Here, she explains how first-hand experience of losing a loved one led her to wanting to provide better support for young people

I started Take Our Hand because I had first-hand experience of losing a loved one as a young person. When both me and my partner were 19, Ollie suddenly passed away. We had been together for two years and I had just moved away from home for university and Ollie was living and studying at Easton College. I had never experienced a death before. When Ollie died, I struggled a lot. Having never experienced death and grief I didn’t know if how I was feeling was normal. My university wasn’t very helpful and there was little support available for me due to the nature of who I had lost and my age. To help me with my grief and to help work through my feelings I channelled all my energy into fundraising and running. I helped to raise over £30,000 in Ollie’s memory which was a huge comfort to me. The running was a way to escape how I was feeling because in that moment I could only think about breathing and not the pain I was going through.

I started Take Our Hand as I wanted to be able to support young people in a way that I wasn’t. I was very lucky to have a good support system around me who helped me and kept me on the right path, but I knew there would be people out there who wouldn’t have those people around them and I didn’t want other young people to look back on their lives and wish they had had the support they needed at the time. 

Take Our Hand is there for young people aged 16-25 as well as their friends and family. We know that if a young person is struggling with the loss of someone then it is likely other people around them are as well. If we can help not only the young person but their family the young person will have better support networks in place moving forward. 

We have seen that young people in our age bracket can fall through the cracks on the services available. They are at the age that they often no longer fit into children’s services but equally not quite into adults either. We have also spoken to many young people who say that the adult services that are out there aren’t tailored to their age group and what young people want most is people who can relate to what they are going through. Young people are already at a difficult time in their lives. Often sitting exams, picking universities, deciding on what career path to take, and leaving home for the first time. There is so much already going on in their lives and if you add a bereavement to that as well it can have a devastating and lasting impact on their lives. 

I like to think our care packages are a hug in a box. A way to know you are not alone and that people are thinking of you. Grief is a lonely place and had that been available for me I think I would have felt a little less lonely. Our care packages provide items to help young people work through their thoughts and feelings which is something I wish I had access to. Your mind is all over the place and I think something like our package would have been extremely helpful for me to get me out of my own head and give me some tools to work through my feelings.

I am very lucky that I have a team of five amazing volunteers who work tirelessly around their work and personal commitments to keep Take Our Hand running. We wouldn’t be able to do what we do without them. I only work part time for Take Our Hand at the moment, so I have another job working for the East Anglian Air Ambulance. My background is in HR and Payroll, and I run the payroll there. Take Our Hand takes up a lot of my free time as well so when I am not working my other job, I am usually doing Take Our Hand work. Although I am currently planning my wedding as well!

We are always looking for people who can help with the work we are doing. If people want to get involved, they can email us at info@takeourhand.org.uk. You can find our referral form on our website – https://www.takeourhand.org.uk/how-we-can-help/ or people can email us directly.

The Bluebell Ball was a huge success and raised so much more than we had hoped: £13,845 was raised in total which is going to make a huge difference to us. As a small charity this will go such a long way and make an incredible difference to young people’s lives. 

Ollie passed away in November 2011 and, after he died, I concentrated on fundraising in his memory which was a huge comfort to me at the time – but the money we raised in his name was given to a national charity and, though it was great to help others with epilepsy, we couldn’t see the direct impact that fundraising was having. Take Our Hand was born out of the loss of Ollie, and I get to see the difference we are making to young people’s lives in what will probably be the hardest time in their lives. Running Take Our Hand feels like the thing I should have always been doing and that feels odd to say because I am only doing this because Ollie died but to know that we are helping many young people brings some form of silver lining in what was a horrible tragedy.

I would love Take Our Hand to reach 1000 care packages delivered in the next couple of years. To know we could support that many people across England would mean the world to me. I would also love us to have a premises. Currently everything is done from my home which works for now but as we grow it would be great to have a hub we could work from and invite young people and supports to. 

I want Take Our Hand to be a well-known name across England for bereavement support. Every young person deserves to have the support they need when faced with a bereavement and we want to be there for them.

Take Our Hand provides bereavement care packages and therapy support for young people aged 16 to 25. Visit Take Our Hand, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This Mental Health Awareness Week, Take Our Hand is fundraising for its bereavement therapy sessions, with match funding from Kind2Mind – The Big Give – meaning a £20 donation would become £40, which would pay for one art therapy session. To receive the match funding, donations need to be made via Bereavement Therapy Support (biggive.org).

Featured images – supplied