Prince William opened up about coping with grief and joked about boxing training on a visit to Britain’s leading child bereavement charity.
The Prince of Wales spoke to teenagers receiving help after losing parents and grandparents - and told how ‘sometimes the hardest thing about grief is finding the words for how you actually feel’.
The 42-year-old royal, who lost his own mother as a 15-year-old, met youngsters including a girl of the same age he was when Princess Diana died.
Praising the support on offer, he appeared to refer back to his own experience, saying: ‘It’s crucial for those first few years, particularly (that) you have support like this.’
He said having such assistance, involving monthly get-togethers and a personal support worker or volunteer, helps a bereaved youngster to ‘practise how to help yourself’.
‘The mind gets focused on one thing, doesn’t it? It’s very difficult to do school and normal life’, William said.
He spoke to the youngsters, aged between 15 and 18, as they were making memory jars, filled with coloured salt, to remind them of relatives they had lost.
William met staff and service users at Child Bereavement UK’s base in Widnes, Cheshire. It is one of eight bases and a helpline run by the charity, which helped 3,000 families last year.
It assists both children with bereavement and adults who are affected by the loss of a child.
He has been a patron of the charity since 2009 but it was established with the backing of his mother in 1994.
During the visit, the prince met support staff, management and members of the fundraising team including Clayton Wilson, a 16-year-old amateur boxer.
Clayton, from Nottingham, began fundraising for the charity after the death of his trainer’s adult daughter – with his efforts including running 250 kilometres (155 miles) in 25 days through advent up to Christmas Day.
As William asked him about his training schedule, the teenager replied: ‘Are you looking to do a bit of boxing?’
William said: ‘I don’t mind throwing a few punches around in the boxing ring but probably not at your level.’
He joked that he could only last ‘half an hour of pounding away’, after which his arms were too ‘tired’.
Meeting the charity’s bereavement counsellors and finding out some of them drew on their own experiences of grief to help others, he said: ‘It’s important to feel there’s a bond. You need a bit of understanding. It can’t be too clinical.’
One of the teenagers who met the prince, Ella, 18, who needed help after her grandfather’s death, told how he made her ‘comfortable to talk about stuff, which was nice. I think he understood how grief works’.
Rebecca, 17, being supported after the death of her father, said: ‘He knows exactly the situation we’ve been in – he’s been in the same situation around our age as well. He really understood.’
Meanwhile Daniel, 18, whose father died when he was 12, said: ‘He was quite down to earth. The charity thrives on fundraising and donations – it can’t offer support without them. You need people like the prince to raise awareness of what they do.’
Sue Randall, executive manager for Child Bereavement UK, which has 69 staff and whose hundreds of volunteers put in 17,500 hours last year, said: ‘The Prince has been a brilliant patron and he’s done all sorts to support us as well as being extremely helpful. He has a big understanding in what we do.
‘The staff are so excited to have him. The climate is pretty hard out there for charities – everyone’s doing a lot more work with less resources.’
Seb Farrell, fundraising manager, said: ‘It’s great when you have someone with such influence coming in but he does have very personal reasons for being involved.’
