When someone tells you they’re grieving, what do you say next?
Volunteers are often trusted with difficult conversations.
Someone might mention that their partner has died while you’re making them a cup of tea. A person you support may suddenly become upset. A regular caller might tell you they haven’t been coping since a bereavement.
Sometimes, the person who dies is somebody the volunteer has come to know themselves.
These moments can leave volunteers wondering:
What should I say? Should I ask about the person who died? What if I make things worse? Is this still within my role?
Bereavement training for volunteers can give people the confidence to respond compassionately to grief while understanding what they can offer, where their boundaries lie and when to involve somebody else.
Why is bereavement training important for volunteers?
Volunteers work across charities, community organisations, healthcare services, hospices, helplines, support groups and countless other settings.
Their roles may be very different, but many involve human connection.
And where there is human connection, conversations about loss can happen.
A volunteer may encounter someone who:
- has recently experienced a death
- is anticipating the death of somebody they love
- becomes upset unexpectedly
- wants to talk about the person who died
- feels angry, guilty or confused
- doesn’t know whether the way they’re grieving is “normal”
- is isolated following a bereavement
- has experienced several losses
- doesn’t appear to be grieving at all
- needs more support than the volunteer’s role can provide
Training can help volunteers understand these different responses without feeling responsible for fixing them.
You don’t need perfect words
One of the biggest worries people have around grief is saying the wrong thing.
That fear can make us avoid the conversation altogether.
A volunteer may change the subject when somebody mentions the person who died. They may reach for reassurance — “At least they had a good life” — because they don’t know what else to say.
Or they may feel pressure to offer advice.
Bereavement training can help volunteers understand that supporting somebody who is grieving is often less about finding a perfect sentence and more about being able to listen, acknowledge what has happened and stay present with a difficult emotion.
Training can help volunteers:
- feel more comfortable talking about death and grief
- know what to say when somebody discloses a bereavement
- listen without feeling responsible for fixing the situation
- respond to sadness, anger, guilt and other difficult emotions
- avoid common assumptions about grief
- feel more comfortable with silence
- understand individual and cultural differences in bereavement
- recognise the boundaries of their role
- know when to involve a supervisor or staff member
- signpost appropriately
The goal isn’t to turn volunteers into grief counsellors.
It’s to help them feel less afraid of grief when it appears in an ordinary conversation.
Use this form to tell us a little about your training needs. You’ll receive our Training Brochure + Indicative Pricing immediately – on screen and straight to your inbox.
Bereavement Training for Volunteer Teams
The Loss Foundation provides expert-led bereavement training for volunteers, volunteer coordinators and organisations involving volunteers in public-facing or support roles.
Training can be tailored to the work your volunteers actually do and could include:
- contemporary understanding of grief and bereavement
- common and less recognised responses to loss
- practical language for conversations about grief
- active and compassionate listening
- responding to difficult emotions
- what helps — and what can unintentionally make conversations harder
- individual and cultural differences in grief
- maintaining appropriate volunteer boundaries
- knowing when a situation is beyond your role
- escalating concerns appropriately
- effective signposting
- supporting someone after a sudden or traumatic death
- the impact of supporting grieving people
- volunteer grief when somebody they support dies
- compassion fatigue and volunteer wellbeing
What is my role – and what isn’t?
This is particularly important for volunteers.
A volunteer may have been recruited because they are naturally caring, compassionate and willing to help.
Those qualities can make them excellent at supporting people.
But they can also make it difficult to know when helping has moved beyond the boundaries of the role.
A volunteer might find themselves worrying about somebody after their shift, feeling personally responsible for making things better or being asked questions they don’t feel equipped to answer.
Bereavement training can help volunteers understand:
I can listen without counselling.
I can acknowledge someone’s pain without trying to remove it.
I can care without becoming responsible for their grief.
I can recognise when somebody needs more support than I can provide.
Clear boundaries don’t make volunteering less compassionate.
They help make compassion sustainable.
When somebody you’ve supported dies
Sometimes volunteers aren’t simply supporting somebody else’s grief.
They are grieving too.
A volunteer may have spoken with someone every week for years.
They may have accompanied them to appointments, shared conversations during regular visits, supported them through illness or simply become a familiar part of their life.
Then that person dies.
The volunteer may feel genuinely sad while also questioning whether they have the right to feel that way.
They weren’t family.
They weren’t a friend.
I was only their volunteer.
But professional and volunteering relationships can still be meaningful human relationships.
A death can affect somebody even when the relationship doesn’t fit neatly into the categories we traditionally associate with grief.
When grief feels invisible
This kind of experience can sometimes resemble disenfranchised grief — grief that isn’t fully recognised or acknowledged by the people around us.
A volunteer may not be invited to a funeral.
Others may not realise how important the relationship had become.
The organisation may need to move quickly on to supporting the next person.
Yet the volunteer may still be affected.
Recognising this can help organisations create healthier cultures in which volunteers can acknowledge difficult experiences without blurring appropriate boundaries or assuming every death will affect everybody in the same way.
Supporting volunteers who hear difficult stories
Not every volunteer will experience the death of somebody they support.
But some roles involve repeatedly listening to stories of illness, bereavement, trauma and loss.
Over time, that can take emotional energy.
Volunteers may experience:
- emotional exhaustion
- difficulty switching off after volunteering
- thinking repeatedly about particular people or conversations
- feeling responsible for the people they support
- becoming emotionally detached
- feeling less able to listen compassionately
- being unexpectedly affected by a particular story or loss
Bereavement training can help volunteers understand emotional boundaries, cumulative exposure and compassion fatigue, as well as when they should seek support from their organisation.
Volunteer coordinators have an important role too
Good bereavement support isn’t solely the responsibility of individual volunteers.
Organisations need structures around them.
Volunteer coordinators and managers can help by making expectations clear, creating appropriate routes for escalation and ensuring volunteers know where to go after a particularly difficult interaction.
Training can help organisations consider:
- how volunteers are prepared for conversations about death
- what sits inside and outside each volunteer role
- who volunteers should contact when concerned
- what happens when someone a volunteer supports dies
- how difficult experiences are acknowledged
- what opportunities exist for reflection or debrief
- how volunteers are signposted to further support
This helps create a culture where compassion doesn’t depend on volunteers managing difficult situations alone.
Expert-led bereavement training for volunteers
Our bereavement training is developed by Dr Erin Hope Thompson MBE, Clinical Psychologist and founder of The Loss Foundation.
Erin has extensive experience across the NHS, private and third sectors. Our training translates contemporary psychological understanding of grief into practical skills volunteers can use in real conversations.
Training can be delivered online or in person and tailored to your organisation, volunteer roles and the situations your teams encounter.
Who is volunteer bereavement training for?
Training can be adapted for:
Befriending volunteers – responding confidently when grief arises naturally within an ongoing relationship.
Helpline and listening volunteers – supporting people who talk about death and bereavement.
Community volunteers – recognising grief and knowing how to respond within everyday interactions.
Healthcare and hospice volunteers – understanding grief while working alongside people affected by serious illness and death.
Peer support volunteers – developing confidence, boundaries and appropriate signposting.
Volunteer coordinators and managers – supporting volunteers who encounter grief, death and emotionally demanding situations.
Charities and voluntary organisations – developing a consistent, grief-informed approach across volunteer services.
Bereavement training for volunteers online and in person
Training can be delivered to individual volunteer teams or across a larger organisation.
We can adapt sessions around what your volunteers actually do, the people they support and the grief-related situations in which they currently feel least confident.
Contact us about bereavement training for volunteers
If you’d like your volunteers to feel more confident talking about grief, understand the boundaries of their role and know what to do when a difficult conversation affects them too, we can tailor training to your organisation.
Use this form to tell us a little about your training needs. You’ll receive our Training Brochure + Indicative Pricing immediately – on screen and straight to your inbox.
