HOPE Newsletter

HOPE Monthly Newsletter

In today's newsletter:

HOPE Noticeboard
HOPE Feedback Questionnaire
HOPE Group Meetings
Support
Easyfundraising
West Norfolk Wins

HOPE NOTICEBOARD

To our newly bereaved survivors, we warmly welcome you to HOPE.

We understand that this newsletter may feel like an information overload at this stage of your journey, so you may wish to scroll down to the Group Meetings and Support sections for now. If you have any questions or need some support at the moment, you are always welcome to reach out to us.

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A Message from Our Trustees

2025 has been a challenging year for many charities, and Hope After Suicide Loss has faced its own difficulties. As we are funded solely through donations, our Trustees — along with Hazel — have worked tirelessly by delivering talks, holding conferences, and working with councils and various organisations to ensure Hope’s name is more widely known and the work we do is better understood.

We are also very grateful to Ruby, who has spent many hours completing and submitting grant applications. Without this combined effort, HOPE simply wouldn’t be able to run.

From 1st January 2026, HOPE will be making some changes. Those receiving one-to-one counselling will be allocated 12 sessions to be taken over a 6-month period. Those currently receiving counselling support will also move onto this new programme. These changes will help ensure that counselling remains focused and supportive, while also allowing individuals to transition into our listening support and group support services, both of which remain open to all. This new model will also make sure we are able to continue providing support to as many survivors in Suffolk and Norfolk as possible.

Despite a difficult year, some wonderful things have happened. We are delighted that in 2025 we launched a peer-to-peer support group in Norwich, and we are honoured to welcome our new Patron, Lady Dannatt MBE, the Lord-Lieutenant for Norfolk.

As Trustees, we would like to extend our warmest wishes to you all for this festive season. We look forward to supporting you throughout 2026.

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Winter Closure Dates

The HOPE Office will soon be going on its winter break soon for the end of 2025. Between 22nd December 2025 to 4th January 2025, our office will be closed and so we may not reply to your email until we are back at work on the 5th January.

We want to acknowledge that this can be a difficult time for lots of people. Here are a couple of tips from the HOPE team, for managing the break:

Connect with a friend, family, or local group - spend quality time with pets too, if you have them!
Take some time for yourself when you need it, whether that's a five minute walk to the shops for some quiet time, or reading a good book for an hour or two.
Make good use of meditation apps - we like Insight Timer and Medito, which are free to use. YouTube also has lots of good freebies too.

Samaritans published a much more extensive list of tools and support here – Samaritans is open 24/7, 365 days a year if you need to talk to someone (call 116 123 for free to speak with them): https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/if-youre-having-difficult-time/if-youre-finding-things-hard-this-christmas-festive-season/

Here is Mind's list of helpful contacts for the winter break period: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/christmas-and-mental-health/useful-contacts/

We wish you a cosy, restful time and look forward to seeing you all in 2026!

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Want to Support HOPE?

At the end of each year, there are often lots of draws and competitions charities can enter into...

My Giving Circle: We have been kindly put forward into a grant draw by a secret admirer! Thank you to whoever you may be for thinking of HOPE. The more votes we get, the better chance we have of winning funds to put towards our support services - if you'd like to vote for us or spread the word to friends and family, here is the link to vote: https://mygivingcircle.org/hope-after-suicide-loss/vote

Movement For Good Awards: You can also vote for us in the Benefact Group's Movement For Good Awards by submitting a nomination for HOPE - here is the link: 12 Days Christmas Draw - Movement for Good - Nominate a charity for an award.

HOPE Feedback Questionnaire

We're putting out one last push for some feedback from our survivors - it's a key part of our organisation that we are survivor-led as much as possible. Therefore, your input is crucial to the service, and helps us to keep evolving with our survivors' wants and needs at the forefront of everything we do.

We recently had our HOPE Strategy Day for 2025 with the staff and trustees at HOPE. One of the outcomes of this meeting was around giving more opportunities for feedback to our survivors, to continue making sure our services are shaped and led by survivors themselves as much as possible.

As such, we have created a simple online form to give space to you to share your feedback with us, things that have been helpful and useful from our services, as well as space for anything you think we could be doing differently.

We will be sharing this feedback form at points throughout the year moving forwards, and one of those points is now! Your answers will come through to us anonymously, and they will be used to consider ways in which we can improve our services. We may also use some of the information from your answers to illustrate the impact of our services, such as on marketing materials or when writing applications for grant funding. Please bear this in mind when you complete the form - we won't include any personal information if shared, so may adapt your answer to remove personal information if shared.

Here is the link to the form. Many thanks in advance for taking the time to provide your feedback - it is greatly appreciated and we consider this information to be very valuable in shaping HOPE.

HOPE 2026 GROUP MEETING DATES

Do come along to one of our monthly group meetings if you can - as ever, you'll be assured of a warm welcome. You are welcome to join or re-join our groups whenever you want to. You can see the dates of all our monthly meetings on our website, and you are also welcome to reach out to Ruby for a copy of all the group details: hopeaftersuicideloss.org.uk/group-meetings/

We know it can feel a bit nerve-wracking joining a new group for the first time, so if you'd like to be connected to your local group facilitator beforehand, let Ruby know. Ruby will also give you the addresses of all the groups for your reference: office@hopeaftersuicideloss.org.uk

The next meetings to take place are:

Lowestoft: 6th January
Bury St Edmunds: 10th December
Ipswich: 17th December
Harleston: 8th December
King's Lynn: 7th January
Norwich: 16th December

We are also sharing with you today the dates for all HOPE group meetings taking place in 2026, hopefully we haven't missed any bank holidays in there! If you would like a copy of these for yourself or to print out, just send Ruby an email and she will send you a PDF version.

SUPPORT

If you, or anyone you know, is in need of support from HOPE, please get in touch or feel free to share our contact details. We offer peer-to-peer monthly group meetings, one-to-one bereavement support (phone or video call), and a limited amount of counselling support from trained professionals.

Ruby Farrell - HOPE Charity Coordinator

Mobile: 07548 315080

Email: office@hopeaftersuicideloss.org.uk

A Big Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has supported HOPE this year, from marvellous fundraising campaigns from our survivors, donation pages set up in memory of loved ones, regular and one-off donations, people who have chosen to support HOPE through EasyFundraising or West Norfolk Wins, nominated us for draws, our wonderful corporate fundraisers, and our generous grant funders.

Recently, we have been very kindly supported by Virgin Wines through corporate fundraising and their festive lunch fundraiser. A huge thank you to Virgin Wines from everyone at HOPE!

Supported by Suffolk Community Foundation through:

East of England Co-op Community Cares Fund
Ellison’s Grantmaking Programme
Beckett Health & Wellbeing Grantmaking Programme

Supported by Norfolk Community Foundation through:

East of England Co-op Community Cares Fund
The Paul Bassham Community First Revenue Fund

We are also thankful to be supported by: The Geoffrey Watling Charity, West Suffolk Community Chest; Belstead Ganzoni Charitable Settlement, Greater Gabbard Community Fund provided by SSE Renewables.

EASYFUNDRAISING

Thank you to everyone raising donations for Hope After Suicide Loss with #easyfundraising!

Not joined yet? Sign up to easyfundraising and when you shop online with your favourite brands, they’ll donate to us. It's free and your shopping won't cost you any extra - the brands you shop with will donate, not you!

How does it work?

Simply create an account with Easyfundraising, and choose Hope After Suicide Loss as the cause you want to support. After this, if you are on your browser using your laptop or PC, you click the button which says 'Donation Reminder' - this adds an extension to whatever browser you are using, which will remind you to use Easyfundraising whenever you are making an eligible purchase online. It is safe, secure, and won't slow your browser down. There is also an Easyfundraising app you can download onto your smart device (phone, iPad, etc.) which will help you to include a donation from your retailer to HOPE when you are making an eligible purchase.

It is a wonderful idea for a donation platform, at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about getting set up, Ruby would be happy to talk you through the process:

office@hopeaftersuicideloss.org.uk

WEST NORFOLK WINS

Don't forget that West Norfolk Wins is an exciting new weekly lottery which raises money for good causes - and HOPE is one of the good causes you can choose. Choose HOPE as your good cause, and for every ticket you buy, you'll get the chance to win this marvellous prize while 60p of your ticket cost comes to us. More information at: www.westnorfolkwins.co.uk

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Diss
Norfolk
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