The study, led by the universities of Bristol and Cardiff, aimed to determine service providers’ perspectives on access to their support before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study found 67.3% of voluntary and community sector bereavement services in the UK reported that there were population groups with unmet support needs which experienced barriers to accessing their service before the pandemic, with minoritised ethnic groups most frequently reported to need support but not access it.  

Despite the disproportionate and multi-dimensional impact of the pandemic on minoritised ethnic communities, for the majority of bereavement services in the UK, the proportion of clients from minority communities did not increase and in some cases decreased during the pandemic. 

Read the full University of Bristol news item

Paper: '"Sadly I think we are sort of still quite white, middle-class really" – Inequities in access to bereavement support: Findings from a mixed methods study' by Lucy E Selman, Emily Harrop et al. in Palliative Medicine [open access]