Making Grief a Public Matter
At a glance
For the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS), Innate Motion helped reframe grief not as a personal crisis or psychological problem but as a journey of personal growth. In a society where grief happens behind closed doors, we worked alongside PPM Consulting to bring the conversation into the open across schools, workplaces, and public and private institutions. Loss is a common human experience that calls for acknowledgment and connection.
Grief touches us all. Each year, approximately 160,000 people die in the Netherlands. From age seven, we begin to experience some form of loss.
In 2021 and 2022, approximately 500,000 people in the Netherlands took at least a week off work after losing a loved one.
Employees dealing with complicated grief are absent for an average of 219 days.
Humanizing Journey
We held personal interviews with people who had experienced profound loss, from child bereavement to the suicide of a loved one. Despite their differences, a shared experience emerged: loneliness. Grief is universal, yet it often isolates. People take the grief upon themselves, working hard to get better. Not realizing there is a solution in working more on their relationships. And being less demanding on themselves.
From these experiences, we uncovered four human needs that underpin the grieving journey: the need for connection, stability, structure, and meaning. We then mapped out which societal players (banks, funeral directors, employers, schools) could play a more active role in preventing mental health problems related to grief.
What made this project uniquely Dutch was its cultural grounding: the societal discomfort around grief, the instinct to “just carry on,” and the openness for collective rituals. A team of experts came up with innovative ideas such as the Grief Box (a toolkit provided by the municipality at the time of death), 115 for Loss (a national phone number and helpdesk), and a National Day of Grief to make grieving visible and shared.
Impact
This project reflects Innate Motion’s belief in humanizing systems. We humanized the system and normalized dealing with grief with collective and down-to-earth solutions. Rather than adding another program, we bridge people, perspectives, and sectors. We help both public and private actors rethink their roles, not through policy alone but through empathy and collective capability.
https://open.overheid.nl/documenten/f1c7bacb-3289-4247-a378-108f66d380d4/file
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