Child Bereavement UK expands access to compassionate grief support

Removing barriers to compassionate support

When a child or young person loses someone they love, asking for help should never become another burden. With demand for its grief support continuing to grow, Child Bereavement UK set out to make every interaction easier, more connected and more compassionate — while building the foundation to reach 1 million children, young people and adults with accessible support by 2035.

Whether someone reaches out by phone, web messaging, WhatsApp or SMS, counselors can continue conversations with the full context of previous interactions, allowing families to focus on receiving support rather than repeating their story.

“Our experience strategy is designed to deliver support that is accessible, emotionally consistent and scalable, so we can meet people where they are and provide the right help at the right moment,” said Laura Threadingham, Head of Salesforce and IT at Child Bereavement UK.

This commitment to expanding compassionate, connected support — and the measurable impact the organization has achieved — earned Child Bereavement UK the 2026 Genesys Orchestrators Innovation Award in the Humanitarian Impact category.

Redesigning experiences for a growing mission

The transformation began with a simple realization: The charity’s technology was no longer supporting the level of care that grieving families deserve.

Voice calls and web messaging operated on separate systems with little integration or visibility. Counselors often lacked the history of previous conversations, requiring children, parents and families to repeat deeply personal stories every time they contacted the charity. Supervisors had limited visibility into live interactions and no practical way to identify when counselors might need support or when someone in crisis required immediate attention.

“The most urgent challenge was the emotional harm caused by forcing grieving individuals, including children, to retell their story every time they reached out,” said Threadingham. “This wasn’t just inefficient; it was retraumatizing. For an organization built on compassion and psychological safety, this was unacceptable.”

The charity knew it needed more than a technology upgrade. It needed to redesign the entire support experience around the emotional needs of bereaved families while creating a platform capable of supporting future growth.

Building connected experiences around people, not channels

To achieve that vision, the organization redesigned support around one continuous journey rather than individual channels.

Child Bereavement UK selected the Genesys Cloud™ platform as the foundation for that connected experience, enabling the organization to unify omnichannel engagement, embrace AI capabilities and integrate Salesforce within a single platform.

Genesys Cloud and Salesforce connect interactions across voice, web messaging, SMS and WhatsApp, automatically matching contacts and cases so counselors can pick up where previous conversations left off. Instead of spending valuable time gathering background information, counselors can immediately focus on providing emotional support.

That continuity has fundamentally changed the experience for those seeking help. As one young person told the charity after moving from WhatsApp to a phone conversation, “It felt like you already knew me.”

Accessibility has also expanded significantly. Recognizing that many young people prefer text-based communication, Child Bereavement UK introduced WhatsApp and SMS as part of its “Grief in Your Pocket” campaign, creating discreet, low-barrier ways to access support whenever it is needed.

Behind the scenes, AI and automation strengthen the human connection. Speech-to-text analytics helps identify subtle indicators of distress, providing an additional safeguarding layer during sensitive conversations. Genesys Cloud Agent Copilot automatically summarizes interactions and writes case notes directly into Salesforce, allowing counselors to spend less time on administration and more time supporting people.

“Genesys Cloud isn’t just a technology upgrade,” said Threadingham. “It is a strategic enabler that allows us to deliver on our mission with greater compassion, reach and impact.”

Scaling compassion through technology

Real-time dashboards now give leaders visibility into demand across every channel, allowing teams to respond more effectively during busy periods and ensure support is available when people need it most. Better reporting also provides insights that help the organization continuously improve services and plan for future demand.

Since implementing Genesys Cloud in 2025, the charity’s annual reach has increased by 20% to 113,000 children and young people — the highest in its history. The addition of WhatsApp, SMS and web messaging has enabled 575 children and young people who had never previously contacted the charity to seek support through channels that feel safer and more accessible.

“Together, we’re demonstrating that a charity can be both technologically advanced and deeply human.” said Threadingham, “And that innovation can be a powerful force for empathy, safety and healing.”

To learn more about the solutions featured in this case study, visit www.genesys.com.