ACHING ARMS
Aching Arms in 2020
Aching Arms is a charity supporting parents who experience the death of their baby during pregnancy, birth or soon after. We have a national profile and are an active member of the Pregnancy and Babies Charities Network, Baby Loss Awareness Alliance, regularly attend the All Party Parliamentary Group on Baby Loss and are stakeholders in the development of the National Bereavement Care Pathway.
Aching Arms works across the UK providing comfort bears to over 150 hospitals, an increasing number of hospices, support groups and funeral directors. We advocate for the mental and emotional health needs of parents after pregnancy and baby loss.
Aching Arms actively advocates for parent’s voice to improve bereavement care and reduce stillbirth rates. We support the needs of parents whose baby has died at any stage of pregnancy and bears are donated to Early Pregnancy Units, Delivery Wards and Neonatal Units. In the UK around 3000 babies are stillborn each year and thousands more couples experience early and late miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, termination for medical reasons and neonatal death. There is an enormous number of UK families affected by the loss of a much wanted baby and Aching Arms, which began as a small grassroots charity has seen demand for its service double in the last 18 months.
How does Aching Arms support parents? We do this by coordinating the supply of comfort teddy bears to over 150 hospitals in the UK and post 80-90 each month, directly to parent who contact the charity. Last year we donated approximately 5250 bears to bereaved families.
The bears have three purposes:
To signpost parents to support agencies to ensure they have high quality bereavement care, support and counselling.
Are a physical comforter for mothers to fill their empty arms. As the bears are donated from one bereaved family to another, each bear also reminds parents they are not alone, especially at the time of shock and devastation it is vital parents know they are not alone and there are others who understand. Partners too have shared with us that they find comfort from our bears, as do bereaved siblings.
Are a conduit for midwives and nurses to discuss the mental and emotional needs of parents in the days, weeks, months and years following their baby’s death.
Alongside our comfort bear programme we also deliver free bereavement care awareness training to hospitals and coordinate a team of 130+ volunteers who give their time to prepare and deliver bears, lead training and represent the charity at conferences and fundraising events.
Aching Arms employs a full time CEO and three part time employees with responsibility for Client Care, Fundraising and Operations. Due to the successful growth of the charity and our wonderful fundraisers, our capacity to be more actively involved in Baby Loss Networks, working parties, research and new projects is now possible.