While many in the Edinburgh area associate Craigmillar with deprivation and tragedy, those in the local community see it completely differently.  One small church community has caught hold of that vision and turned it into reality by offering practical hope to some of the community’s most vulnerable members.  The promise of local church minister, Liz Henderson “to not just do normal things at this church” has been a catalyst for remarkable change within the local community.

With only 40 regular attendees, Richmond Craigmillar Church has exceeded its own expectations and gone on to run one of the UK’s most innovative and transformational community projects. ‘Richmond’s Hope’, which operates out of the church’s purpose built facilities, is the UK’s only child bereavement centre open every week of the year. In a community where many struggle with loss, ‘Richmond’s Hope’ provides support for children aged 4 –12 who have been deeply affected by traumatic bereavement.

	“The church had done the traditional things for so long but they really hadn’t worked,” explains Liz Henderson. “We used to get people walking past the building saying ‘I bet that church is shut’. We began to realise that whatever we did would have to be about the community and not about us.” The transformation of Richmond Craigmillar Church, from irrelevance and obscurity to a beacon of hope in the community, has been remarkable.

In 1997, the church with a hole in the roof and 10 regular attendees began its journey into the community by conducting funerals and supporting families who were undergoing bereavement. “Over the course of about two years I found myself overseeing the funeral arrangements for 15 separate families where children had suffered bereavement of a parent or sibling,” says Liz. “The adults were always encouraged to talk about their bereavement, while everyone assumed the children were fine not talking about their loss.”

Through these funeral arrangements and the church’s subsequent increased contact with families in the community, the plight of young children unable to speak of their loss became increasingly evident. The church also became more central to the life of the community in 1999, when it opened ‘Richmond’s Café’ to provide nutritious and affordable meals for local residents. With over 100 people passing through the café each day, the church began to acquire a better understanding of the needs of the community and its inhabitants. “The Café gave us the opportunity for constant community consultation”, explains Liz. “We began to realise the struggle that many children were facing in coming to terms with their bereavement. We wanted to help these children and we wanted to do it professionally.”

Liz and members of the church began looking into the local services available to support children who had suffered loss. They discovered that, while organisations such as CRUSE offered support to bereaved secondary school children, there was no such service for children of primary school age. Parents, unable to lift the silence of their children following bereavement, began to turn to Liz and the church in the hope that they might be able to help rekindle joy and openness within their children.

The first of many children brought to Richmond Craigmillar Church for the purpose of coming to terms with their loss, was eight-year old David. Since the death of his brother in 1998, David’s behaviour had changed. His struggle to talk openly about the death of his brother was noticed by his parents and teachers. In 2001, David’s parents decided to bring him to the music club that ran at Richmond Craigmillar Church. The aim of the music club was to provide children who had undergone bereavement with an opportunity to express their feelings outside of the family setting and away from the place where they had experienced loss. 

With the help of local churchgoer and