Grief Coach: Feasibility and acceptability of a text message program for bereavement support among grievers in the United Kingdom

Abstract

To address gaps in bereavement services in the UK, a national charity offered free access to Grief Coach, a 12-month text message-based grief support program. To assess the feasibility and acceptability of the approach, this study examined program reach, retention, and user satisfaction. Over 4000 grievers enrolled in the program over 13.5 months; 6- and 12-month retention rates were 87.8% and 83.2%. Among individuals responding to a satisfaction survey (response rate = 55.9%), 94.8% rated the program as moderately or very helpful and 95.4% said it contributed to their sense of being supported in their grief. Common themes emerging from a qualitative analysis of the written comments were how the program helped with coping with the pain of grief and user appreciation of the program. Grief Coach may be a promising component of high-quality grief support to meet the needs of grieving people in the UK.

Ethical statement

Because the goal of the evaluation was to learn more about users’ experiences with and perceptions of the Grief Coach program to guide program improvement, and because the findings remain specific to the program, these activities do not represent human subject research as defined in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR Part 46 (Office of Human Research Protections, 2020). As such, the evaluation did not require an Institutional Review Board review.

Disclosure statement

Deborah Levesque is a consultant to Help Texts, the company that developed and licenses the Grief Coach program. Melissa Lunardini and Sarah Adams are employees of Help Texts, and Emma Payne is the company’s owner and CEO. Bianca Neumann is employed by Sue Ryder.

Notes

1 The program name for U.S. subscribers has since been changed to “Help Texts for Grief.”

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.