[1] Traditionally, TCF volunteers organise and facilitate local groups that hold regular, free, open meetings in neutral premises.
Each group follows TCF's creed, which mandates that bereaved parents, grandparents and siblings attending these meetings need not speak but are free to express their feelings.
[4] More recently TCF has also developed numerous online resources including 12 moderated Facebook groups and many Zoom meetings, for constituencies such as fathers, siblings, and members bereaved by suicide.
One grieving mother sent flowers to the other via the hospital chaplain, the Rev (later Canon) Simon Stephens, and the parents decided to meet to find ways to help each other survive their loss.
The Compassionate Friends in the US developed following the publication of a story in Time Magazine in 1971 under the title "Therapeutic Friendship", describing the experience of a mother whose daughter had died from cancer.