Introduced for the first time this year, the Doula of the Year category is intended to acknowledge the invaluable work done with people approaching the end of their life by those trained as end of life doulas and soul midwives.
End of life doulas are non-medical individuals, who help those who are dying and their families to feel safe and supported as they make the transition from this life to whatever is next.
With just five entries for this category, the judges felt that each of these people deserved recognition for this very important work which so often is unknown or unnoticed. By its very nature, supporting the dying is not work that is likely to elicit testimonials from clients, nor do doulas generally seek acclaim for what they do, the reward is in knowing they have helped make a difference at one of life’s greatest moments, both to the dying person and to those left behind.
For this reason, the four runners up as Doula of the Year have been named as Lizzie Neville, Nett Furley, Jane Henderson and Anna Lyons, with the winner in this category being Felicity Warner, founder of The Soul Midwives School for her additional work training others in this unique work.
The 2017 Good Funeral Awards were generously sponsored by Greenfield Creations
Hello there – Congratulations to Felicity Warner the winner and to the runners up. Whilst we all wish to support people and those they love to have the best life they can until they die and there are some similarities in the role of Soul Midwife and End of Life Doula there are some significant differences too. This includes the length and content of our training. I trained with Living Well Dying Well and if you visit the web site there is a good explanation about our work. We also host a Facebook page with lots of information about Death and Dying /lwdw.uk and on Twitter we are @livingwelldying. Thank you very much to the Good Funeral people for recognising our work.