Luna Foundation CEO has launched her campaign on BBC Radio 4 in new programme

Anna Wardley, CEO of the Luna Foundation, is continuing to push forward with her goal to ensure that children who have experienced bereavement through suicide, receive the best support possible, rather than slipping through the gaps.

Anna has herself been exposed to bereavement through suicide and has used her own experiences to help others, and she is now on a mission to count the number of children affected.

She launched this campaign on a BBC Radio 4 programme that she has recorded, expressing the importance of knowing how many children are affected by this kind of loss and how they can be supported to ensure that they do not have to suffer in silence.

In the episode of Four Thought to be broadcast on Wednesday (December 7), Anna opens up about losing her dad to suicide at the age of nine, and throughout the programme, Anna describes herself as one of the ‘countless’ children that lose a parent to suicide.

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Anna said: ‘At Luna Foundation we’ve launched the Time to Count campaign to call for children left behind after suicide to be counted. It’s vital that we start counting the children who lose a parent to suicide, as an important first step in improving the support that they receive.

‘Up to now, they have remained invisible and that has been a barrier to providing them with the support they need. Through our Time to Count campaign, we’re on a mission to change that as a matter of urgency.’

She uses the term ‘countless’ as no one knows the exact amount of children affected, but it is estimated that there are more than 9,000 children a year, and during her own research, Anna found that a child is three times more likely to take their life if they have lost a parent to suicide.

The #TimeToCount campaign is founded on Anna’s own international research for her Churchill Fellowship, where her research titled ‘Time to count: supporting children after a parent dies by suicide’ contains research from across two continents which has been worked on for two years.