We found the gap from inside it

One family's loss, and the gap it revealed

Simon walked out of a hospice with two small children and a pamphlet

His wife had died. His children were seven and two. His employer's support was six counselling sessions with a seven-month wait. For his children, there was nothing through his employer, and external help was hard to find.

When he accessed support, he was diagnosed with depression and put on antidepressants. But it was not depression. It was grief: a normal part of every life, not an illness.

He spent nearly a year on and off work, carrying his own grief and being the only support his two children had, with no idea where to start. Years on, the hard days still come. Anniversaries, birthdays, a bad week at school. The impact of bereavement is lifelong. The support is not.

Later Simon met and married Katie, who became step-mum to their children. She saw what they had carried, what they had needed and never got, and still what they need today.

So we built a company to provide the support we wish we had

Memory Robin was founded by Katie and Nicola: one from inside the family, one from inside the bereavement sector. Katie brought twenty-two years of commercial leadership and the lived experience of a household rebuilding itself around grief. Nicola brought a career spent leading training and research in the bereavement sector, teaching the people who support bereaved families. She is also a counsellor who has supported countless individuals and families through grief.

Between them sits the whole problem: the family that needed help, and the expertise it struggled to find.

Why we train employers

Because the workplace is where this is most fixable. Simon's employer was not unkind. It simply had no idea what to do, and no one had ever shown it. That is true of most workplaces, and it is entirely solvable with training, a practice managers can follow, and a specialist on the end of a line.

We are not here to tell employers they are getting it wrong. We are here because we know exactly how it feels when they do not know what to do, and because a manager who has been trained can change the whole shape of someone's worst experiences.

Why we are building the Memory Robin platform

Because support cannot stop at the office door. A bereavement lands on a household, not an individual, and the hardest hours rarely happen between nine and five. We want to give adults and children the support and guidance they need at home: somewhere to turn on the hard days, at any hour, whatever the shape of their loss.

That is what the Memory Robin platform is for. A place to keep the memories that matter, gentle guidance written with specialist input, and support built for the whole family, including the children who are so often left out of it entirely. It is the platform our own family needed and could not find, and we are building it so the next family does not have to go looking.

To improve grief literacy and reshape the way bereavement is supported, at work and at home

Grief is one of the few certainties in every life, and it is still one of the things we are least equipped to handle. Not because people do not care, but because almost nobody has been taught what to do.

So that is our work. We teach it. We train the manager who has to have the first conversation, the colleague who wants to help and is afraid of saying the wrong thing, the HR team holding it all together. And we build the tools that carry that support home, to the family behind the employee, including the children who are so often left out of it entirely.

Grief literacy can be taught

Grief literacy is the shared, working understanding of grief: what it is, how long it really lasts, what helps, and what does not. It can be taught, and when it is, everything downstream changes.

At work and at home

This is deliberate, and it is the part that makes us different. A bereavement lands on a household, not an individual. Support that stops at the office door leaves the hardest part unaddressed, and it is usually the part that decides whether someone comes back properly.

Families first, always

Every decision is guided by the families we serve. If something isn't right for them, it isn't right for us. That is also exactly what makes our work valuable to employers.

Safe before anything else

Safeguarding, care and credibility always come first, before speed, growth or a good idea. Nothing we make goes out until we are sure it is safe.

We have lived it

This is not a market we researched from a distance. We know this journey personally, and everything we build carries that understanding.

Dignity in everything

In our language, our materials, our sessions and our emails. We say died, not passed. We name the person. Grief deserves warmth and honesty, never jargon or euphemism.

Do the hard thing well

Most workplaces avoid this subject. We walk toward it, gently, properly and with care, because that is what it deserves.

Together, or not at all

With the sector, with our clients, and with the families who tell us what they needed. This work is only possible together.

The company

Memory Robin Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17145244, Harrogate. Registered with the ICO. Professional indemnity and public liability insurance held; certificates available on request. Memory Robin®, Guardian Robin® and Pocket Robin® are registered UK trade marks.

Clinical safety

Organisational member of the Childhood Bereavement Network. All counselling is delivered by independently contracted BACP-registered counsellors in regular clinical supervision, with a named Designated Safeguarding Lead.

Board and advisors

The founders are supported by named advisors spanning health technology, finance and product, bringing outside challenge to every major decision. Meet them on our team page.

Build partners

We are supported by the Health Innovation Leeds Incubator, St Gemma's Hospice, the NatWest Accelerator, We Are Affective and Virgin StartUp.