Dr Dawn Chaplin is Project Director for the Birmingham Bereavement Project, a two year partnership project between University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust and NHS West Midlands. Dawn is a Registered General Nurse and was Bereavement Manager at University Hospital Birmingham for ten years and Head of Bereavement Services at Heartlands for two years before taking on this new role.

Dawn was a bereavement volunteer at Birmingham Cruse Bereavement care for several years. As vice chair of the Bereavement Services Association, Dawn is part of a national steering group working with Cruse Bereavement Care on the second Department of Health funded Bereavement Partnership Project ‘Gold Standards Bereavement Project’. Dawn is also working with the Department of Health on the ‘Improving Death Certification Programme’

Dawn is also vice chair of the Bereavement Research Forum and is driving forward the need for more research on end of life and bereavement to enhance care provision. Her PhD ‘Bereavement in the Abrahamic Faiths’, undertaken at Birmingham University, explored the lived experience of bereavement through the four existential dimensions of time, space, body and relationships, from a faith perspective.