Pro-Vice-Chancellor, it is my great honour to present Jenni Thomas OBE for the Award of Doctor of Health in recognition of her pioneering work as one of the UK’s leading authorities on grief support and education in relation to child death or bereavement. Through this work, she has shaped policy, training and practice. Her focus on real-world impact, campaigning, and supporting vulnerable members of our society aligns closely with the University’s values; her work in the healthcare sector and relating to death and society aligns closely with our education and research.

Jenni was born during the Second World War and after an early childhood in South Africa she moved to England and began her career in the NHS as a nursery nurse in a maternity home where unmarried women were sent to have their babies, away from public view. She witnessed the grief felt by the mothers who had to give their babies up for adoption once they were born.

In 1965 she moved to a Special Care Baby Unit team in Amersham and, like most healthcare professionals in those days, received no training on how to understand and care for patients whose baby or child died in hospital. Although Jenni and her colleagues each had their own sense of humanity and caring, staff who showed their emotions after such an event were often considered to be unprofessional. It was during a visit from Professor John Bowlby, the so-called Father of Attachment Theory – which students graduating today will likely be familiar with – that Jenni began to understand what needed to change and why. As her nursing career progressed in maternity and paediatric units she began to question and challenge bereavement culture within our healthcare system, in particular the separation of medical care and emotional care. She saw clearly that death and dying needed to be acknowledged as an important part of the care provided to all families and professionals and decided to try to change the system from the inside.

In the 1970s, having been inspired by the renowned psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Jenni devised a training programme that would educate professionals in loss and grief as well as provide emotional support for them while they developed their own self-awareness. During this time, she retrained and became the first Bereavement Counsellor in the NHS, working for Buckinghamshire NHS Trust. The success of her work led to similar posts being created in other health authorities, using protocols and policies that she had developed. This was a significant step forward in the support of grieving families desperately in need of help.

From accident and emergency units to hospital chaplaincies, in this part of her career, Jenni taught professionals to act as advocates for vulnerable, grieving families. The training resources she produced were always based on what she had learnt from bereaved families, and the model continues to serve as a benchmark for many public organisation,s including the police, social services and education.

In 1994, working with, and supported by, NHS colleagues, Jenni established The Child Bereavement Trust (now CBTUK). This was not the end of her achievements, however, and in 2000 Jenni was the joint winner of the Nye Bevan Inaugural Award for those working in the NHS for her pioneering service improvement in the difficult area of neonatal bereavement. The following year, in 2001, she served on the Retained Organs Commission, set up to advise and oversee the return of organs and tissue to bereaved families across the UK and in 2002, she was awarded an OBE. In 2003, she moved to a Founder President role in CBTUK and stayed in this until 2009.

But she did not stop there. Jenni is advisor to the Ruth Strauss Foundation, having supported the family in 2018, and has helped many bereaved families through her work with the Angus Lawson Memorial Trust, Rosie’s Rainbow Fund, Teddy’s Wish and Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood UK. After the 2004 tsunami, she spent time in Singapore with grieving families and learnt that while there are many cultural differences associated with death, the devastating grief parents feel for a child is the same the world over. Last year, Jenni published her first book specifically for bereaved parents entitled ‘After a child dies - parents’ grief’, to more widely offer the comfort and courage which has meant so much to the families that she has worked with directly.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor I present to you Jenni Thomas who is eminently worthy to receive the degree of Doctor of Health, honoris causa.