The
Lincolnshire Centre for Grief and Loss (LCGL), is a charity sponsored
by the Lincolnshire Co-operative and grant funded by Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
LCGL began life as Lincolnshire
Co-operative’s own bereavement support service, making counselling available free of charge to anyone in the
community who felt it would be of benefit to them. Take-up grew so
rapidly that Lincolnshire Co-operative registered the service as a
charity in its own right in order that it could expand and develop
its facilities to meet the ever increasing demand for qualified
therapeutic counselling. LCGL was then established as an independent
charitable organisation governed by a Board of Directors and financed
through grant aid, sponsorship and donations, with the service
registered as a company in October 2002 and attaining charitable
status in October 2003.
In January 2004, in response to the need to provided counselling for children in the Lincolnshire area, LCGL opened its Counselling and Training Centre. The Centre, located in the one-time Polish Ex-Servicemens’ Club on Tentercroft Street in Lincoln, provided LCGL with the facilities for two counselling rooms, a training room and a children and young people centre. The Centre was opened by the Bishop of Lincoln, The Right Reverend Dr John Saxbee, in front of an invited audience of representatives from the Lincolnshire Co-operative, the Childrens’ Fund Lincolnshire and a network of agencies from the statutory and voluntary sectors.
In
July 2015, LCGL closed its old Tentercroft centre and established its
new offices at the Carlton Centre.
With the financial provision made
available initially by The Children’s Fund, and now provided by the Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, LCGL now offers
specialist counselling to children and adolescents (7 – 19 yrs) who
are exhibiting emotional and behavioural signs of grief & loss
due to varying life events, such as divorce and separation in the family, disturbed
/ dysfunctional parenting, illness within the family, death of a
loved one, etc.