Some decisions you make as a business are made because they make sense on paper. This one was made because it was the right thing to do.
Held in Our Hearts is a Scottish charity supporting families through baby loss. They offer counselling, peer support, and a service that is the first of its kind in the UK: Hospital to Home, where trained staff contact bereaved families in their own homes within 48 hours of losing a baby. Not a leaflet. Not a signposting service. A person, at your door, in the hardest days of your life.
This morning, the teclan team attended a community awareness breakfast hosted by Held in Our Hearts in Inverness. We heard from families. We heard from Lindsay, the charity’s peer supporter and hospital liaison for the Highlands, who supports bereaved parents from Cape Wrath to Skye. We heard from Natalie, who came to the charity as a bereaved mother and now raises funds so other families do not face what she faced alone. We watched a film made with and by the families the charity has supported, and we sat quietly with what it showed us.
The numbers we heard this morning alone tell you something about the scale of need. This year alone, Held in Our Hearts has supported 563 individuals and held 1,295 support sessions across Scotland. Forty of those sessions involved someone experiencing suicidal ideation. One woman phoned her support worker from a hospital bed to apologise for missing her visit. She had just tried to take her own life.
That is not a statistic. That is what happens when bereaved families are left without a pathway, without a framework, and without someone who knows their name and will drive to their house.
Nicola, who leads the charity, described something this morning that stayed with us. When a baby dies in Scotland today, if Held in Our Hearts is not in that area, there is no pathway, no legislation, no framework that holds what happens to that family. They are working with the Scottish Government to change that. But until it changes, the charity is the safety net.
As many as one in four people will experience baby loss. That includes the people you work with, the people you do business with, the people sitting across from you at a breakfast meeting, who you would never know are carrying this. It is one of the most common and least spoken about forms of grief in our communities.
At teclan, this work resonates deeply with us. Like many families across Scotland, people within, and close to our team have experienced the devastating reality of loss, and because of that, we understand how important support, compassion, and real human connection can be in the darkest – most isolating – moments.
That is why supporting Held in Our Hearts is not simply a charitable partnership for teclan. It is something we believe genuinely matters. The Highlands having this service embedded in its communities is not a nice-to-have. It is essential.
teclan is proud to support Held in Our Hearts as our designated charity. If you are a business owner or leader looking for a cause doing genuine work in the Highlands, we encourage you to find out more. If you are someone who has experienced baby loss, or knows someone who has, and did not know where to turn, now you do.
Held in Our Hearts. They are here.
Visit heldinourhearts.org.uk and learn more today.
