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funeral directors
Who are the real rotters here?
Is this a Welsh thing, or is it beginning to happen all over the UK? In Wales, according to a BBC news article, the number of public health funerals is alleged to have doubled in a decade.
This is contradicted by the view of the Local Government Association. In a survey dated 2010 it reports:
The number of public health funerals held by local authorities has remained broadly consistent across the last three financial years (2007/8 to 2009/10) … Two fifths (40 per cent) thought there had been some increase, the top three reasons being “higher numbers of people dying with family and friends unwilling to contribute to the costs of the funeral” (59 per cent of respondents); “higher numbers of people dying with family or friends unable to contribute to the costs of a funeral” (56 per cent); and “higher numbers of people dying with no friends or family” (49 per cent) … A calculated cost per public health funeral revealed that, on average, funerals cost £959
Whatever the truth of the BBC’s assertion, there may be evidence that, in Wales, there is growing reluctance of undertakers to arrange funerals for families who are skint.
It is difficult not to sympathise with the undertakers. They carry plenty of bad debt as it is. When they agree to arrange a funeral for a client who is making an application to the Social Fund for a Funeral Payment, they have no guarantee that the application will be successful. So slow is the Department of Work and Pensions in processing these claims that the dead person will have been dust-to-dusted long before verdict + cheque come through. For an undertaker, taking on such a funeral is a gamble. You can see why they might not like the look of the odds, the more so in an age where money owed to an undertaker is no longer necessarily seen as a debt of honour.
At the same time, to turn a family away is to risk considerable damage to a reputation for caring community-mindedness, the cornerstones of an undertaker’s good name. The BBC news article highlights this:
Joanne Sunter, from Portmead in Swansea, said she was turned away by four funeral directors because she was unable to pay a deposit of hundreds of pounds up front.
“I was heartbroken. My mother was in a mortuary rotting and none of these people would help me,” she said.
Note that Ms Sunter does not direct her anger at the DWP. But then it’s not clear that she is eligible for a Funeral Payment. If she isn’t, then where does responsibility for her plight lie?
A little while ago Nick Gandon, in this blog, sparked discussion about the way the Funeral Payment is administered – here. If funeral directors were to come together and refuse to take on applicants to the Social Fund, then, as Norfolk Boi had it, “The DWP would have to solve the situation they have created” – by making up its mind a lot faster.
The Minister for Work and Pensions, Steve Webb, has another idea, according to Teresa Evans. He’d like to substitute the Funeral Payment with a crisis loan, relieving pressure on the Exchequer and loading debt onto the poorest in society.
Teresa thinks the best way for the Welsh to bring their undertakers to heel is by taking matters into their own hands and doing everything themselves. There may be two schools of thought about the feasibility of that.
I can’t find any recent figures on successful applications for a Funeral Payment, so it’s hard to know if there’s been a sharp increase in recent years. I have only been able to discover that between 1988-89 and 1993-94 awards increased from 37,000 to 72,000 with a corresponding rise in expenditure from £18.4m to £62.9m. I guess the number continues to rise.
Which is why I have found my mind wandering towards what I can only shamefacedly describe as a conspiracy theory.
We live in an age where fecklessness is under attack by all political parties. Tories talk of a ‘culture of irresponsibility’ and Labour talks of a ‘something-for-nothing culture’. Lib Dems presumably say something halfway between the two. They all agree on the need for instilling some social discipline in what’s come to be known as the underclass.
Note that Steve Thomas, chief executive of the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), reckons the trend towards public health funerals is going to grow. He adds: “Now, it’s not a trend any of us would welcome, but it does reflect the nature of society and probably the problems we have in the economy at the moment.” Note the order in which he lists those two trendsetters. We can take it, I think, that when Mr Thomas talks of “the nature of society” he is referring here to 1) an increasing number of feckless people wilfully neglecting to make financial provision for a funeral and 2) a “higher numbers of people dying with family and friends unwilling to contribute to the costs of the funeral” . If that is so, ask yourself what is the likely effect of publishing Ms Sunter’s photo. If this is the look of applicants to the Social Fund it is not necessarily a good look and may even be a stigmatising look.
So here’s my conspiracy theory. Is the DWP, by making the applications process such a gut-wrenching nightmare, hoping to shock and shame the poor into setting money aside like they used in the good old days when the man from the Pru would pop round on a Friday evening and collect their two bob?
If so, it would seem to be discriminating against the deserving and the undeserving poor alike.
Over at WhatDoTheyKnow.com they’ve been making masses of FOI requests for information about public health funerals. Find them here.
Are you in or out?
It’s not often that you see a funeral entrepreneur on Dragon’s Den, but last night’s show shone a brief spotlight on an enterprise which, in an industry unaccustomed to innovation, is likely to elicit responses ranging from ‘It’ll never work’ to ‘Tcha.’ Theo Paphitis ruled himself straight out, no messing. But it turns out that death spooks him.
It’s one of those online planning sites (you know, the ones that never make it) with a twist. It’s more than a just passive repository of funeral wishes. It’s also a service comparison website which enables consumers to find the funeral director who’ll give them what they want.
The idea is that you plan a funeral online (with plenty of help), and your plan is then sent anonymously to all funeral directors in a geographical radius set by you. The funeral directors respond with a quote and a pitch. They name a price and they also say why they think they are best for the job. They can link to their website and anything else that makes them look good – third-party endorsement, a video clip on YouTube, whatever. You then choose the funeral director who seems both nicest and best value, and from there on it’s face-to-face and personal. If it doesn’t work out, you go back to the website and choose someone else.
How does it pay for itself? This is the bit that funeral directors are going to hate. You buy a coffin from the website at a cheaper price than you are likely to be able to buy it from a funeral director. The website pockets the margin.
Want to know more? Go to the website and try it out for yourself. It’s called CompareTheCoffin.com. Yeah, yeah, what’s in a name?
Is it likely to catch on? Don’t ask me; I don’t have a business brain. But I’d hazard a guess it stands a good chance of establishing a niche. More and more people are shopping around for a funeral. CompareTheCoffin does all the legwork for them and still almost certainly enables them to make a saving. It seems to have something of the win-win about it, for best funeral directors, too – but, as I say, don’t ask me.
I must declare an interest, though. When the originator of CompareTheCoffin, Steven Mitchell, approached me at the conception stage and asked me to write some text for his website, I did some drilling down, not in a Paphitis way, but into the ethics of it. I satisfied myself that, yes, this is an ethical business idea, Steven is a good guy, as is his web developer Akmal (this is a rare partnership between a Jew and a Moslem), and I set about earning a few meagre pence as a day labourer.
Whether or not CompareTheCoffin is a runner is something you are in a far better position to judge.
After last night’s show the CompareTheCoffin website came under what looked like sustained cyber-attack, which may perhaps be rated flattery. If it’s back up after its drubbing you can find it here. Catch the Dragon’s Den show here.
Square Pegs in Round Holes
Posted by Charles
Love him or hate him, Barry Albin-Dyer is Britain’s only celebrity undertaker. Love it or hate it, he’s written another book.
It’s called Square Pegs in Round Holes. It’ll appeal to fellow undertakers up and down the country because it promises to reveal the secrets of his enviable business success. But its lessons are not exclusive to Dismal Traders. Barry’s Way may (or may not) be appealing to all manner of entrepreneurial people.
He’s nothing if not ambitious: “From the outset, my goal was to make Albin’s the best funeral business in the world. I’d like to think I’ve done that.” Undertakers hoping to pick up a trick or two are likely to be disappointed. Albin-Dyer does not go into operational detail. But two essential characteristics of a successful undertaker which are abundantly personified by Albin-Dyer were accurately detected when he was at school. His headmaster observed: “He undoubtedly possesses considerable aplomb and a great capacity for organisation.” Spot on. He’s a high-functioning showman. All the best undertakers are.
Much of Albin-Dyer’s recipe for success is orthodox enough – homespun, even. He’s a down-to-earth man, rooted in his beloved Bermondsey. He loves to make a difference and he loves to put something back. I don’t doubt for a moment that he is one of life’s nice guys. For him, there is a high moral value in honest, hard work. He believes that a business must have an ethos; he calls this ‘the goodness’.
As a boss he comes across as a hands-on benevolent despot. Each day begins with a staff breakfast for information sharing and team building. There’s even a 5-a-side football team. Everyone’s bonded and very disciplined. And you never know where Barry’s going to pop up next. There’s nothing radical about the way he does things, but there’s plenty of thoroughness. And buzz, too. His would seem to be a small business of the very best and most vibrant sort.
He is aware of the importance of embracing change – and of putting the business into the hands of his two sons before he gets too old to change. Well, nothing changes all that fast in the funeral industry, so there’s little challenge here; the changes he identifies in the course of his working life hardly made the earth move. He can’t see a future for an online planning service. He may be wrong about that. I’m not sure that his use of a call centre serves the cause of personal service.
Albin-Dyer has lived through interesting times which must have exposed him to temptations to go really big. The conclusion he has drawn from the activities of the consolidators, from Howard Hodgson and SCI through to present day operations like Dignity, Co-op, Laurel Management, Funeral Services partnership et al, is that they don’t work: “Large funeral companies spread themselves too thinly and aren’t able to provide the kind of personal service that small companies like us can.” He doesn’t want to lose ‘the goodness’. I wonder if he’s right about this. Sure, the present crop of consolidators gets things serially wrong. Dignity is the brand that dare not speak its name, and the others are little better. Funeralcare’s trying a little harder. But our shopping malls are full of admired brands. There’s no reason why funeral directing should be any different. There remains much opportunity for a successful operator, in my view. I mean, if John Lewis did funerals…
Albin-Dyer steers clear of philosophy. He doesn’t talk about how funerals can be experiences which are transformative of grief. No Thomas Lynch, he; if he broods on these things, he doesn’t brood on them in this book. Not only does he exemplify the near-universal separation between undertaker and ceremony maker, he asserts that the two have nothing to say to each other: “I know that there are clearly defined boundaries between my role and the role of the priest or vicar. And I make sure that neither I nor any of my staff ever step across it.”
No mention of secular celebrants and the changes they are bringing to the way we do funerals. No thoughts about the opportunities for creative collaboration with ceremony makers of all stripes, and joining up this great disconnect between the cortege and the ceremony. That’s an eyebrow-raising oversight. Don’t get left behind, Barry.
Buy Square Pegs in Round Holes here.
The things they say
The Last Performance
At a funeral home death is something that may become a daily routine. And it is also where some kind of performance is taking place. ‘The last performance’ is a behind-the-scenes look at the place where funeral rites are prepared.
Directed by Jorge Tur Moltó. On Vimeo here.
Britain’s Youngest Undertaker
Posted by Charles
Did you see Britain’s Youngest Undertaker on BBC3? It’s on the iPlayer and it’s worth a look
It’s a documentary which follows Mike Ryan’s funeral business in Newport through the awkward experiment of testing the vocation and aptitude of his younger daughter, Rachael. For Mike, this is all about legacy. He’s sixty and his health is poor, exacerbated by his irascible, control-freak temperament. He’s into succession planning. There are shades of King Lear in the scenario, and Rachael has much in common with Cordelia. Not that the film is a tragedy by any means. But there’s an underlying melancholy emanating from Mike, a difficult man whom I very much took to. Not an easy man, but a man of integrity.
Rachael begins her apprenticeship as soon as she leaves school, a stroppy, pretty, spoilt (by Mike’s own admission) teenager. She has much of her father about her. She is put through her paces. She does grotty stuff, stocktaking coffins; she does difficult stuff, observing an embalming; and finally she gets to conduct a funeral, and she does just fine. She grows from arsey minx to thoughtful young woman. All will be well and Mike can heart-attack happy in the knowledge that all he’s built will go on. A lot of people will feel Rachael is too young. I don’t know that I am persuaded of that.
I don’t suppose there are many in the funeral trade, as Mike unsparingly terms it, who would have sat through this film oozing approbation. If Mike has made any money he’s certainly not reinvested much in his premises. There’s not a lot of peace, perfect peace about the place. There’s a moment when Mike cries out SHIT! from the ‘chapel of rest’, where he’s struggling with shirtsleeves and going off on one in front of a dead person.
Mike inhabits the type of a particular sort of undertaker. There are lots like him. Old school, for sure. For Mike it’s all about logistics and getting to the crem on time. He’s a fine-detail man. He comes over as impatient and obsessive. He treats everyone the same. But you can see that he’s got a heart of gold. I liked the way he greeted the family who come to ‘view’ in his jeans. No bullshit, not many words, but humanity for sure.
And this, I guess, is the plain way they do things in Newport. For everything that Mike might be perceived not to be, he is the product and servant of the culture of Newport. And that, I would say to critics, is actually the point.
Watch Britain’s Youngest Undertaker here.
Keeping them honest
Posted by Charles
What do we think of e-petitions? Democracy at its finest? A place where the mad, the bad and the rabid can loose off a bit of spleen? Something in between? HM Gov describes e-petitions as “an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK”. We never supposed our governing class cared so much about what we think.
Topping the charts just now is Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits. You can see the rest here.
Languishing at the bottom we have this: Hook up the national grid to the crematoriums
Also down there is this: Regulation of Funeral Industry
I’ve been monitoring this Regulation petition for a few days. When I first looked it had 5 signatories. When I just looked it had 7. It seems not to have legs.
In a more or less scandal free industry this is to be expected. But when an undertaker screws up, it’s natural that the person who’s been screwed is going to conclude that regulation is the answer. There’s an example of this here.
I don’t think regulation is the answer for three reasons.
First, when someone dies it is their executor who is the lawful possessor of the body, responsible for disposing of it. So the executor is the funeral director. The executor has to register the death. The executor has to apply for burial or cremation. The executor has to demonstrate that he or she saw it through. The role of the undertaker is secondary, subordinate and collaborative. It is to do those things (and only those things) that the executor is allowed to delegate and which he or she doesn’t want to do. Conclusion: if an executor doesn’t need a qualification, why on earth would an undertaker?
Second, professionalising and regulating undertakers can only reinforce the perception that they are the default disposers of our dead and, worse, move them a step closer to being the only people allowed to do so. We the people are the default disposers of our dead. An undertaker is our agent. That is our ancient right, and that right defines our responsibility both to ourselves and to our dead. Our dead belong to us. Let us not give them up.
Third, it is hard to see how nasty undertakers could be transformed into nice ones by government regulation. It doesn’t work like that in any other industry. It doesn’t work like that in America where costs are high and scandals plenty.
Where there is room for improvement—and there certainly is—it will be brought about by clients who exert informed expectations on undertakers. We all have a responsibility to guard our best interests, even at a time like death.
In short, consumer scrutiny is the way to keep ‘em honest. Don’t sign the petition.
What You Need to be a Celebrant (the unofficial version)
Posted by Gloriamundi
Health warning: this will be opinionated – it’s only my view
1. Ask yourself why you want to do it, and listen to the answers. The motivations of celebrants are varied, and not necessarily clear to themselves at first. It’s a role that reveals yourself to yourself. That can be quite a tough process. You’ll want to feel happy with some robust, clear non-financial reasons for doing it.
2. Another income stream is essential; it is all but impossible to earn a sensible living. The demand for your services will be unreliable and unpredictable. There may be a very few people who can take enough ceremonies each week to earn a very modest living, but they must be super-efficient, emotionally and spiritually tough, and have a fade-proof capacity for empathy.
3. There are probably some people who should never try to be teachers or airline pilots or…celebrants. You need a basic toolkit:
* empathy and patience to deal with the bewildering variety of responses you’ll come across amongst bereaved people (they can even be startlingly rude sometimes!)
* a reasonably wide knowledge of the ways of the world – you meet all sorts of people, and you’ll want to pick up very quickly on cultural signals, work references, social contexts
* an understanding of, preferably a gift for, ceremony and ritual
* the ability to write and speak in a way that creates enhanced meaning, and draws people towards you rather than keeping them at a stiff distance.
Some but not all of these things can be improved with training – provided they are there to begin with. (Fair enough, I couldn’t fly an Airbus if I trained for ten years…)
4. Here’s the big stuff: for the bereaved people you work with, you need to be able feel and show some love. Not the sentimental version, the real, unselfish, compassionate thing. You’re not there just to take efficient notes about someone’s life, stick some philosophical niceties fore and aft, and play a CD or two. You need to be able to enter a circle of grief and share a little of it without being knocked over yourself. You’re on a journey with these people. They’ve not been on it before, nor have you, and you can’t know your final destination when you start the journey.
5. Obvious enough: you have to put your own preferences and beliefs at a working distance, while you help people explore what they need. This sometimes means letting go whilst family members do something you may think you could do better yourself. A funeral isn’t an artifact, it’s an event; your control over it won’t be total.
6. You need to stay calm if unexpected things happen (mostly they don’t.) In fact, reducing tension without being superficial is something important you always need to do, so people can feel what they feel, not what they might think they are expected to feel.
7. If you’re good, you’ll find a sense of balance, constantly shifting as you read people’s responses and tune your voice, your gaze, your stance; you need what people usually call presence, and yet it’s not about you. The ceremony needs to belong to them; it’s not a showcase for your erudition and eloquence. You’re sharing the floor with them, even if yours is the only voice heard.
8. OK, so:
* being a celebrant is badly paid (at many funerals, the flowers cost more than the celebrant’s fee) and the training is expensive
* some crems are dreary, some undertakers can be difficult
* it can be nerve wracking (at the first one or two, nerves are predictable, but things can go wrong however well-experienced you are)
* it is sometimes deeply upsetting; a tragedy that has resulted in a phone call to you from a funeral director you’ve met twice and don’t much like, asking you to visit a family you have never met – who are in pieces
* even with traditional British levels of self-control, raw grief is a difficult thing to share a room with. The only guide is your compassion, the only help is your skill.
9. If you are being honest with yourself, (if you’re not, you’ll never be a convincing celebrant) if you still want to do it, welcome – it’s a deeply fulfilling job that may overturn your preconceptions about your own mortality. If you wonder why you feel elated as you leave the crematorium. It’s because you’ve been privileged enough to help people with a unique event at a major crisis in their lives.
Blessed are those who mourn
Posted by Charles
Here’s a thing. RJ Scholes, funeral directors of Stamford in Lincolnshire, have bought a new hearse and a new limousine.
So what, I hear you exclaim.
What kind? I hear undertakers who read this blog enquire. Ans: Ford Fairlanes. Not all that classy, I wouldn’t have thought, mere Fords?
It seems that aforesaid Fords are going to play an important symbolic and emotional role in the grief management of Stamfordians.
Given that the most important service a funeral director offers is personal service – humanity, time, care, genuineness – it is curious to hear Vic Woodward senior branch manager, opine that (this is according to the muddled Rutland and Stamford Mercury) “the new vehicles are part of their ongoing commitment to provide the best possible service to our clients throughout the Stamford area.
“He added: “They will ensure we offer comfort to close family, at the same time reassuring them that every aspect of funeral arrangements has been given the closest attention.””
This evokes the words of our Saviour, as recorded in Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” I’m not skilled in biblical exegesis, but I wonder if Christ really had cars in mind.
Read the article here.
RJ Scholes is… a branch of the Anglia Co-operative Funeral Group.