Following the Queen’s Speech this week, which made no mention of providing support services for the bereaved, we are calling for emergency funding to be made available to provide vital bereavement support for those bereaved by Covid 19.
Covid 19 Bereaved Families for Justice spokesperson Rivka Gottlieb has issued the following statement:
“The Queen’s Speech delivered this week, in Mental Health Awareness week no less, confirmed what we have thought to be true for a long time. This Government is so keen to ‘move on’ from the pandemic that they have forgotten about the 193,713 families who have lost loved ones to Covid 19. Families desperate for support are having to wait months and months for a single consultation, and yet there was no mention of bereavement support in the speech. Given our many attempts to secure necessary funding, this omission was not a mistake, but an act of cruelty.
We have suffered the very worst effects of the pandemic, and now we are being asked to shoulder that pain and trauma alone. The Government hasn’t given us a second thought. In refusing to provide adequate bereavement support the Government are causing untold pain to thousands of people in the UK, and delivering us into a mental health crisis that will cripple the NHS in years to come.”
