“Everybody is on a different journey and will be grieving at different times. It’s telling them that it’s okay, and that grief is normal,” says Margaret Hannibal MBE, chief executive of children’s bereavement charity Mosaic, which is celebrating ten years of supporting children and young people and their families, through the loss of a loved one.

The idea for the charity came about in 2007 when Margaret and her colleague Patricia Williams realised there was a gap in provision for support for bereaved children.

Although some help was available, it was only in cases where the cause of death was terminal illness and did not extend to children who had lost family members to road traffic accidents, sudden deaths or suicides.

“We had some start-up funding from the Macmillan Unit in Christchurch and started off in my living room,” remembers Margaret, who received an MBE for her work in 2014.

“It’s really just grown from there.”

Mosaic began with counsellin g young people and their families and quickly branched out to running an activity day, then a twice-yearly residential weekend, where the children and parents get to spend time having fun with their peers, realise they are not alone, and that it is okay to enjoy themsel ves.

They also enjoy team building activities, have the opportunity to speak to a doctor about any questions they may have arising from their loss, and do some work on anger, while the parents take part in similar activities on a separate site.

“Last year we worked with 210 children” says Margaret.

“That’s just in Dorset. There are obviously others that, for some reason, do not access the service. That’s part of our job – to identify those areas.

“It’s really up to the age of 18, but the majority of children we work with are of school age.

Our ethos is there is no point taking a child out of a family and working with them – it needs to include everybody and how they’re feeling and communicating.”

Children are generally referred to Mosaic through their school if a change in their behaviour has been noticed, but families can also refer themselves.

The charity receives a very small amount of local authority funding, which is used to provide around ten, one-hour sessions .

Some families may only require five or six, others may need the sessions extended.

“The individual work, which is done by qualified counsellors, is very much creative work, craft work,” explains Margaret.

“It may be with a young lad taking them out and kicking a football around, just making them feel at ease.

“We usually go to their family home, or we may see them at school, some where they feel comfortable.

"Every family is so different and we are flexible and change it to whatever they need."

As well as the residential weekend at Leeson House in Swanage and activity days at Avon Tyrrell in Bransgore, Mosaic runs a training programme giving a basic introduction to childhood grieving.

It also runs a conference twice a year attended by 80 to 90 delegates and works with local schools to assist them in dealing with a bereaved child.

Just 16 per cent of its costs are covered by the local authority funding, so Mosaic and its supporters are consistently fundraising to find the extra money needed to find these vital services .

“Families are involved in all the activities until they want to stop coming really,” says Margaret.

“We’ve got five young ambassadors who are children and teenagers that we’ve given support to – they’ve done some thing special to give back . We are almost at the point now that some of the children that we’ve worked with will come back as volunteers.

"We see ourselves a big family.”

Mosaic has gone from two members of staff in the office to nine, with 20 self-employed counsellors who work throughout the county and around 45 volun teers.

“It’s not that the need has grown, it’s just awareness of there being a service available, which there wasn’t before,” explains Margaret.

“But one thing we pride ourselves on is that we don’t have a waiting list . As soon as we get the referral we will make contact with the family, we will arrange to go and see them or to have a telephone conversation.

“I think it’s giving the children skills and what to do to help themselves and to become more resilient to face other problems that are going to happen just generally in life.”