Bev Beaumont began her NHS career 1982 and has worked in midwifery at Airedale General Hospital since 1987. For the last two years, she has solely focused on supporting bereaved families.
Two bereaved parents nominated her for the Elaine Thorp Award for Bereavement Care.
In her nomination, Jodie said: “Bev works all hours and always goes above and beyond she is just flawless. She helped me massively through my bereavement period and without her I don’t know where I’d be.
“She puts her families first before herself, she does everything possible to help them, she doesn’t judge she just listens and tries to give the best advice she can. She is an all-round beautiful woman and if we had more Bev’s in the world, it would be a better place.”
Jodie also highlighted the support group for bereaved parents that Bev helped set up and runs with her colleagues.
“The Sunbeam group in the grounds of the hospital is our safe space to chat, meet new friends, rant etc, we have a garden that we can go and remember our babies, she is always arranging events and most of all she is our voice.”
In the garden, Bev and colleagues host all kinds of events for parents.
Bereavement Support Midwife, Bev, explained: “We recently held a Wave of Light in our Sunbeam Garden. The Yorkshire Voices Choir sang for us, we had a parent speaker, our Chaplain spoke, and we all lit our candles and before a quiet reflection. There were around 80 parents there and it was really symbolic just being together, some of these families we’ve known and supported for many years, some as many as 15 years.”
The second nomination for Bev came from Kate, who said: “Bev is the ultimate champion for good bereavement care. She listens, she cares, she and her team have gone above and beyond through three pregnancies with me and my family, and I am certain we have coped better than some of my peers because of the top notch care we received during and after our loss.”
Bev was surprised to be nominated and overwhelmed with emotion hearing Jodie and Kate's kind words.
She said: “I was shocked when I found out I’d been nominated and for it to come from bereaved families is very heartwarming, very humbling. It’s an honour and a privilege to support these families through heartbreaking times and to be able to hold their hands leading to happier ones.
“As a midwife I always felt it was important to get bereavement care right and I felt like I could give a good service and support to the families through really, really tough times. And that kind of evolved over the years. I qualified as a Midwife in 1988 and became a Labour Ward Coordinator in 1993. I wasn’t always able to provide direct patient care but would always follow-up on patients when they’d gone home. Ten years ago, I was allocated 18 hours a month for bereavement care which has snowballed in the last two years. Since January this year, I’ve worked 24 hours a week and my colleague Gemma started working alongside me in June of this year. Both posts have been funded for a year.
“It’s also so important to support other staff to do it to a really high standard and be comfortable and confident in doing so. I’ve always tried to help people out in Gynaecology and A&E, all the routes where women come in. So, it’s trying to support and improve the service throughout the Trust which we’re really driving at the moment.”
Find out more about the Elaine Thorp Award for Bereavement Care.