Engaging in perinatal loss in the Czech Republic: Keen community and haphazard institutionalisation

Abstract

In the Czech Republic, community responsibility for care of the bereaved after pregnancy loss, and specifically perinatal loss, is a recent phenomenon. Using a sociological, qualitative, explorative framework, the paper analyses practices and contexts for establishing community care as emerging bottom-up initiatives. The research, funded by the Czech Science Foundation 2016– 2019, traces the significant change in the status quo of Czech practices of perinatal loss and associated bereavement care. Grassroots initiatives address these challenges rather than the public health system of the post-socialist past. The paper reflects risky or random as well as synergic effects of the changing environment in perinatal bereavement care provision.