Lord's turned #RedForRuth on day two of the second Ashes Test at Lord's in support of the Ruth Strauss Foundation, which provided emotional support to people as they prepare for the loss of a parent; Text to Donate: Text TEN, TWENTY OR THIRTY to 70600
Thursday 29 June 2023 15:41, UK
Sir Andrews Strauss says it was his late wife Ruth's hope to help people 'do death well' as they set up the Ruth Strauss Foundation, the charity providing emotional support to people as they prepare for the loss of a parent.
The foundation was established by former England captain Strauss in Ruth's memory after she passed away from a non-smoking lung cancer in December 2018 at the age of 46.
It aims to raise awareness and funds for research into the fight against non-smoking lung cancers but also offers emotional support to people as they prepare for the loss of a parent.
"About two weeks before Ruth died, she and I had a conversation about what a foundation would do if we set one up in her name, what would we focus on?," Strauss told Sky Sports.
"She talked about helping people to 'do death well', and that's effectively what we're trying to do."
The #RedForRuth Day has become a staple of the England Test summer, with Lord's turning red for one day's play a year since since 2019 to raise awareness of the charity.
Day two of the second Ashes men's Test match on Thursday was dedicated to the Ruth Strauss Foundation this year, with spectators encouraged to wear red clothing to the day's play.
"I'm so excited to have the ability to showcase everything the Ruth Strauss Foundation is doing," said Strauss.
"Hopefully the ground will be resplendent in red all day long, and of course, we're all hoping for a significant fight back from England as well. There's a really good vibe and buzz here already."
"We help families go through grief, help families prepare for the death of a parent who has got a terminal diagnosis," Strauss said. "It's an awful ordeal that those families have to go through, particularly for children, who are often not involved in this and don't know where they stand.
"We're there to offer that support to families, either directly through our family support service or indirectly through the training programmes we do to train up health care professionals, and also in the way that we organise peer-to-peer group sessions, to allow people that are going through this to speak to others who are also.
"You feel so lonely going through this experience. You don't know what to do. There's this massive elephant in the room around the impending death of a parent, and we're there to help them and make that awful ordeal just a little bit easier for each of these families."
"Research shows that kids that don't deal with grief, there are long term negative effects - whether that is depression, alcoholism, etc," Strauss added.
"And one of the things that we've focused on this year is talking to adults that have been through child bereavement and some of the difficulties they've faced by just bottling it all up.
"We're helping hundreds of families at the moment, which is fantastic, but there are 40,000 kids every year that lose a parent, 127 children every day. So we've got to expand our reach."
Following Ruth's death in 2018, one of the foundation's key aims is also funding research into the fight against non-smoking lung cancers.
"Non-smoking lung cancer is on the rise and no-one quite knows why it us," Strauss added. "We've helped fund a Cancer Research UK project and they came up with the first link between pollution and non-smoking lung cancer.
"There's a lot of work to be done in that area. Unfortunately, too many non-smoking lung cancer victims are only diagnosed in stage three or four when the cancer is incurable."
You can text to donate to the Ruth Strauss Foundation: Text TEN, TWENTY OR THIRTY to 70600 to give £10, £20 or £30.
For more information on how you can donate, visit https://ruthstraussfoundation.com/donate/
