BEREAVED children throughout Wyre Forest face losing out on vital counselling to help them overcome their grief, as a cash crisis threatens to shut down a local charity.

The Bramble's Trust - set up by parents of a victim of the Hagley RC High School minibus crash - has been refused its bid for National Lottery funding to safeguard its future for the next three years.

The fund, which has supported the charity for the past three years, has rejected its plea for more than £190,000 to pay for four support workers to work with bereaved youngsters in North Worcestershire, South Shropshire and Dudley.

Family services manager, Catherine Hill, said Bramble's will be forced to close at the end of the year unless alternative funding can be found.

The axing of the trust would mean 40 families currently receiving help would lose out on a unique counselling service.

It was launched in 1998 by Steve and Liz Fitzgerald, from Rock, whose 13-year-old daughter, Claire, was among the 12 Hagley RC pupils who died, along with their teacher, when their minibus crashed on the M40 in 1993.

At the time, the couple felt there was no support tailored for their younger daughter, Sarah, and other children in the area who lose close family members.

Since then, the Bramble's Trust has helped 600 families, each with one or more children, come to terms with the loss of a sibling or a parent.

"We try to give them the tools to cope with their loss," said Mrs Hill, adding: "Children grieve in a very different way to adults and communications within families can be a massive barrier. We work to help them overcome that so parents and children can talk openly and rationally."

The service runs residential counselling weekends with follow-up sessions, family contact days, a session to help children cope with Christmas and an annual trip to the West Midland Safari Park to let them know it is all right to have fun and to smile.

The four salaried workers have all lost close family members and three of them first came to the Bramble's as families looking for counselling themselves.

"We cover a big area and there is nothing else like the Bramble's Trust," said Mrs Hill, "It will be such a shame to think that bereaved families will not have a service like this - a service that they really need."

She and other workers and volunteers have been busy applying to various organisations for grants and have even done supermarket bag packing, which raised nearly £800.

The trust already relies heavily on donations and fund-raising, like its annual 10km race, to pay for the services it runs and Mrs Hill said it would be unable to function without a major cash injection to continue employing the four paid workers.

Anyone who can help with funding should contact Mrs Hill on 01299 402322.