Charity funds ongoing Held in our Hearts partnership with NHS Fife

Date awarded: October 2025
Awarded value: £39,000
Location: NHS Fife

Following the success of an initial small grant awarded in 2023/24, we have now committed £39,000 to funding this initiative over the longer term. This longer term commitment, over three years, will allow Held in Our Hearts (HIOH) to expand its Hospital to Home (H2H) service in partnership with NHS Fife’s maternity service. This funding will ensure that bereaved families receive consistent, trauma-informed support from hospital discharge through to long-term recovery.

Held in Our Hearts

Held in Our Hearts is a Scottish charity with over 40 years of experience in baby loss counselling and peer support. Their H2H model offers a unique ‘opt-out’ service, meaning families are proactively supported without needing to seek help themselves —a crucial lifeline during an incredibly isolating time.

In 2024/25 alone, around 90 families in Fife experienced the loss of a baby. Held in Our Hearts offers a range of services including peer support, counselling, sibling support, and memory-making activities, all tailored to the unique needs of each family.

NHS Fife’s Director of Midwifery, Aileen Lawrie, welcomed the expansion of the service, explaining the heart-breaking, profound and long-lasting effects on families of baby loss. She explained that the ongoing partnership with Held in Our Hearts will help ensure that, alongside the essential clinical care, families will also have access to the emotional and psychological support needed to help them through their journey of grief. She also explained how the services provided by Held in Our Hearts complement NHS services leaving no family to navigate their trauma alone. She added that having ongoing funding will help the unit to build a sustainable, integrated support model that meets the needs of bereaved families, both now and in the months and years to come.

CEO of Held in Our Hearts, Nicola Welsh also welcomed the news of the three-year funding saying that it would enable Held in Our Hearts support staff to deliver compassionate, specialist pregnancy, baby and infant loss support to the community of Fife and that it would allow families to navigate their grief with compassion, and hope and ensure that no one is alone after baby loss.

We are proud to support Held in Our Hearts and our NHS Fife maternity colleagues in their mission to provide compassionate, specialist care to families in Fife during their most vulnerable moments. This is a fantastic example of our commitment as a charity to support partnership approaches and early intervention that leads to better health and wellbeing for people across Fife.

Mark McGeachie , Director of Fife Health Charity

Royal College recognition

The successful implementation of the Hospital to Home service in Fife has also seen the project shortlisted in the ‘Outstanding contribution to pregnancy loss & bereavement care’ category of the Royal College of Midwifery’s prestigious annual awards ceremony, which will take place in February 2026.

For more information about Held in Our Hearts and the services they provide, visit: www.heldinourhearts.org.uk.

Charity funds ongoing Held in our Hearts partnership with NHS Fife

Held in Our Hearts

Royal College recognition

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Charity funds ongoing Held in our Hearts partnership with NHS Fife

Held in Our Hearts

Royal College recognition

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