Bereaved Mid Wales mums expand child loss support after backing from local firm

Lock Stock Self Storage selected The Loss Lounge in Newtown for a £100 donation after bosses were moved by the group’s work supporting grieving families.

The charity was nominated by a group of supporters who urged the company, which has a site in the town, to recognise its role in helping parents with the devastation of child loss.

The group, which meets on the last Friday of the month at Platform 1 community hub at Newtown Railway Station, was launched by Alice Jones and Emma Edwards after they discovered many Mid Wales parents had nowhere to turn for support.

Both mums know from their own experience how hard it is to find the right support.

Alice’s son Ronnie was born prematurely and died at 15 months old in November 2021.

Emma’s son, Ewen, was born sleeping at 36 weeks, six days in March 2024.

Alice said the financial backing from Lock Stock would allow the group to expand the help it can provide families suffering a bereavement.

That includes the launch of a free child bereavement craft group at Platform 1 on February 21 from 10am to noon, with ambitions to make it a regular event.

Alice, mum to four-year-old Dougie and three-year-old Mina, said: “When we first started up in June we were just doing monthly group meetings for bereaved parents.

“And then we started doing workshops at our groups as well.

“And now with the donation we have branched out and we’re doing our first bereaved children’s group workshop.

“It is open to any bereaved children, not just those who have lost siblings.

“I think people might be a bit scared to speak about bereavement to their children, or they don’t know how to address it, so I think it’s quite nice for the children to have something where they can talk about it to other children.”

Alice, 32, said she was delighted with the financial backing from Denbigh-based Lock Stock Self Storage.

“I wasn’t actually aware of the funding offer until somebody tagged us into the social media post, and then it just spiralled from there with lots of people nominating us,” she said.

“It’s great that Lock Stock do things like this and support people.”

Alan Brightmore, manager for Lock Stock Self Storage’s Newtown site, said: “We were incredibly inspired by the work The Loss Lounge does and the support it offers to so many across Mid Wales and beyond.

“We are delighted to support such a good cause.

“The group is a more than worthy recipient of the donation we have offered.”

Alice, who works as a finance officer for Barcud Housing Association, said the group was currently looking for its own premises to allow it to expand its services further.

She said there was a real need for support for families at a time of bereavement.

Alice said: “I lost my son Ronnie in November 2021 and I didn’t meet any other parents who had experienced what I had experienced, I found I couldn’t connect with anybody.

“I then met Emma and she opened up to me to say she had lost her son Ewen.

“We just connected instantly and it was just so nice to have somebody there who knew what I was going through.

“We had a few chats, went out for dinner, and thought ‘why can’t we set this up for other people?’

“We decided to go full steam ahead and had a chat with Platform 1 and we did our first group meeting in July last year.

“We have 18 members at the moment, all bereaved parents, from Newtown and the surrounding area.

"The support we’ve had has been wonderful.

“We’ve had the doctors support us, the chemists support us, we have had health visitors saying they didn’t know where to signpost people and they do now.

“We’ve worked alongside the bereavement suite in Telford and Shrewsbury, they signpost people to us, they have our poster there.

“Then we started one-to-one sessions because we were finding some people weren’t quite ready to come to a group setting.

“And we have now set up a hotline, a 24-hour WhatsApp group for people if they just want to have a chat.”

Emma, 41, mum to 15-year-old Oliver, 14-year-old Harriet, 11-year-old Tabitha, and Elliot, eight, said: “We are now trying to target rural Wales because people are just kind of left I think and just don’t have that support.

“Another thing that we offer is a shopping service so if people are struggling to go to the supermarket or just can’t face going out, we will do their shopping for them and do a door-drop."

Emma, who is training to be a mental health nurse, added: “If they are not working because of what they have been through or they are struggling mentally, we also have food vouchers from Morrisons, Tesco and Iceland that we can hand to people to do their own shopping.”

Lock Stock’s storage park serving Newtown is located on the Dyffryn Industrial Estate.

Its location makes it ideal for the storage needs of residents throughout the Mid Wales area.

The company, founded in Denbigh in North Wales in 2000, has over 5,700 storage units providing more than five million cubic feet of space at more than 35 storage parks across North and Mid Wales and the border counties.

They estimate that over 60 per cent of their units are rented by people moving house or keeping treasured possessions but nearly 40 per cent, about 2,000, are used by used by a variety of businesses for storing materials, stock and equipment.

There is also a growing market from students looking to store possessions outside term time and Lock Stock also specialise in the off-site hire - and sale - of containers, delivered to location by their specialist lorry which can even bring a unit to your premises to fill or empty and store it at any of our locations.

For information about Lock Stock Self Storage including off-site container hire contact them on 01745 817178 or go to https://lockstock.biz/