Rust Bucket Rally presents cheque to KGH and NGH for new baby loss counselling service

Midwifery staff from Kettering and Northampton General Hospitals, Petals founder and CEO Karen Burgess and Rust Bucket Rally organiser Carlos Baldry gathered in Northampton for the launch of the service, which officially began on July 1, yesterday morning (September 28).

Carlos of Wellingborough said: “The fact that a brand new service is starting based purely as the result of the Rust Bucket Rally and which will make an immediate impact to people in the area where I’m born and bred makes hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It is just incredible.”

The Rust Bucket Rally embarked from Wellingborough on a five-day journey in June to Scandinavia, taking 85 cars costing no more than £1000 through Flensburg in Germany, Copenhagen and onto Oslo, before heading back via Amsterdam.

The fundraising efforts resulted in £135,000 being raised to launch a specialist service at Kettering and Northampton General Hospitals for parents who have experienced the loss of a pregnancy or baby.

Petals (Pregnancy Expectations Trauma and Loss Society), a UK specialist baby loss counselling charity, has partnered with University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN) to deliver specialist counselling for bereaved parents and will be offering the service for two years to provide mental health support to up to 60 families at each hospital who experience the loss of a baby during pregnancy or shortly after birth.

Referrals are made directly to Petals by the hospital’s bereavement midwifery team, with online sessions provided at no cost to families.

Karen Burgess, founder and CEO of Petals, said: “I am delighted to be launching this service in partnership with University Hospitals of Northamptonshire, enabling many bereaved parents experiencing baby loss to have direct access to our online specialist counselling service.

“We are so grateful to Carlos, Pete and Rosie and the entire Rust Bucket Rally team who raised such a phenomenal amount of money, allowing us to fund this service over the next eighteen months, and we wish to thank everyone who has gone above and beyond to make this all possible.”

Petals was chosen as the charity to benefit from the Rust Bucket Rally by Northampton residents, Pete and Rosie Chilver, following their own experience of baby loss.

For them, the prospect of a new service specifically aimed at counselling for baby loss is ‘phenomenal.’

They said: “When we left hospital after losing our baby, we were simply sent home. No follow-up appointment. No support information. No guidance for what came next.

"That so many bereaved parents will now have someone to talk to, to guide them through their grief together as a couple is phenomenal. Knowing they won’t walk out of those hospitals with zero signpost to support offers us real comfort that we’ve managed to make a difference out of something so painful.”

Petals became a national charity in 2022 after being founded 11 years earlier, and now partners with 30 NHS hospitals and healthcare providers across the UK. The charity, based in Swaffham Bulbeck in Cambridgeshire, is hoping to ensure every bereaved parent can ‘access timely, compassionate, and clinically informed care when they need it most.’

Emma Perkin, deputy head of midwifery at Northampton General Hospital and UHN Maternity Bereavement Services lead, said: “Our maternity bereavement services are delighted to be working in partnership with Petals, thanks to the incredible fundraising efforts of everyone involved in the Rust Bucket Rally.

“The specialist counselling provided by Petals will complement the care and support already offered by our maternity bereavement teams, giving families additional specialist support following the loss of a baby.”

The Rust Bucket Rally recently returned form its September voyage to Lake Como in Italy, stopping in Stuttgart in Germany and heading through the Alps. Its next outing in April will see a convoy of cars take on a 500-mile trip along the coastal road around Wales.

More information about the Rust Bucket Rally can be found here.