What happens when grief-specific support becomes harder to access?

Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what people actually need when they’re grieving. Not what looks supportive from the outside or what sounds good in a policy, but what actually helps when your life has changed and you’re trying to work out how to keep moving through it.

That’s why I paid attention when I heard about the changes happening at Griefline, a service that has supported Australians through grief and loss for decades.

Griefline joined SANE in late 2025, and its services are now being integrated into SANE’s broader support model. The Griefline Helpline will no longer operate in its previous form, with calls instead redirected to SANE’s Service Enquiries Line between 10am and 8pm, Monday to Friday. Grief and loss support continues through SANE’s RecoveryClub and online forums, so support hasn’t disappeared, but the way people access it is changing.

And I think that change is worth talking about.

Grief is not the same as general mental health support

Grief can absolutely affect our mental health. It can exist alongside depression, anxiety, trauma and many other experiences. But grief itself is a human response to loss, and I think there is value in having support that understands the specific experience that comes with it.

When someone is grieving, they may need someone who understands that there isn't a neat timeline for when they should be "better". They may need to talk about anniversaries, the person who died, returning to work, changing family dynamics or the seemingly ordinary moments that suddenly become incredibly difficult.

And then there is the practical side of grief, which is something I talk about often through Yellow Falcon. Death brings an enormous amount of administration with it. There are forms, accounts, phone calls, deadlines and decisions that have to be made while someone may be experiencing the most overwhelming period of their life.

Grief-specific support can recognise all of those layers.

Grief doesn't operate during business hours
 

One of the things that stood out to me about these changes was the question of accessibility.

Grief isn't convenient. It doesn't wait until Monday morning or arrive neatly within service hours. It can comes in the middle of the night, on a Sunday afternoon, in the car, at the supermarket or while you're sitting at your desk trying to get through a normal working day.

That doesn't mean every difficult moment requires a helpline or crisis service. There is an important distinction between experiencing grief, needing emotional support and experiencing a mental health crisis.

But it does make me think about how easy it is for someone who is grieving to find the right kind of support when they need it. Do they know where to turn? Can they access someone who understands grief specifically? And what happens when they need support outside the hours that traditional services operate?

 

What people need from grief support changes

Another challenge is that grief isn't static. What someone needs in the first few days after a death can look completely different from what they need three months, six months or two years later.

In those first days and weeks, the need may be overwhelmingly practical. There may be a funeral to arrange, organisations to notify, paperwork to complete and a household that somehow still needs to function.

Later, the practical load may lessen while other parts of grief become more visible. Returning to work might be difficult. An anniversary might be approaching. Friendships may have changed. Everyone around them may appear to have returned to normal while their own life still feels fundamentally different.

There isn't one service, conversation or intervention that can meet every one of those needs. But there does need to be somewhere people can turn throughout those different stages.

We should pay attention when the way support is delivered changes

I don't think this is about criticising Griefline, SANE or the decision to change how these services are delivered. Organisations evolve, funding environments change and different models of support emerge.

But when a long-standing grief-specific service changes significantly, I think it's worth stopping and asking what that means for the people who use it.

What grief-specific support is currently available to Australians? How easy is it to find? Is it accessible when people need it? Do people understand the difference between grief support, mental health support and crisis support? And are there gaps that we need to be talking about?

These are questions I don't think we should wait until someone is grieving to answer.

Grief deserves its own conversation

One of the things I've learnt through building Yellow Falcon is how many people are looking for practical, human conversations about grief. People want to understand what to say to someone who has lost a loved one, how to support a grieving employee, what needs to happen after someone dies and how you keep functioning when life looks completely different from the one you expected.

There are some excellent organisations and people already doing this work. But changes to long-standing services are an opportunity to look at the broader landscape and ask whether we're meeting people where they actually are.

Grief will touch almost every one of us at some point. The need for support isn't going anywhere.

So perhaps the conversation we need to be having isn't only about which services exist, but what grief support in Australia needs to look like next.

And I'd genuinely love to hear what others think.