National Association of Funeral Directors

Lobbying scandal strikes Funeralworld?

4 June 2013
Charles
17 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, National Association of Funeral Directors

The lobbying scandal presently raging in Parliament has drawn the spotlight to all-party parliamentary groups — APPGs. Three dishonourable Labour peers were caught by undercover cameras (remember them?) telling reporters that an all-party parliamentary group could be set up as a lobbying vehicle for a fake South Korean solar energy company. The ignominious Patrick Mercer declared his willingness to set up an APPG in favour of Fiji. 

There’s an APPG for funerals and bereavement. It is chaired by Lorely Burt, Lib Dem MP for Solihull. It is funded by the National Association of Funeral Directors. It contains no representatives of consumer bodies and is arguably the poorer for that. It represents the interests of the industry, and these are often the interests of consumers, too. They are presently pressing the case for increasing the social fund funeral payment. 

Short of sending in our own undercover cameras, we are of the impression that this is an APPG which may be designated blameless, if possibly a little one-sided. 

ITV Exposure Responses FPL & NAFD

24 October 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: death and funerals, funeral directors, Funeral Partners, National Association of Funeral Directors

The following statement was read out after the Exposure programme 24.10.2012

‘Last month in ‘The British Way of Death’ Exposure went under cover in the funeral industry at Funeral Partners Limited revealing racism and disrespect of bodies and the bereaved.

 FPL who own the branches in Slough and Tooting, where we’d been filming, have apologised, five people have been sacked, one has resigned and a seventh is currently suspended.
The company says it’s investing in diversity training and will be improving facilities and equipment where needed.
They’ve also offered to reimburse fees paid by a widow who was shown being racially abused at her husband’s funeral.

The NAFD has said that “in the light of the Exposure programme it will begin a root and branch review of its code of practice.” ‘

 

Bring on the best

18 October 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral directors, National Association of Funeral Directors

The US version of the NAFD is the NFDA. The NFDA has a Pursuit of Excellence Program. Here’s what they say about it: 

Pursuit of Excellence is the premiere recognition program for funeral service, setting standards of excellence that motivate funeral home staff, inspire innovation and sustain consumer confidence in the funeral profession.

NFDA’s Pursuit of Excellence program recognizes funeral homes that are committed to providing outstanding service to the families and communities they order cialis 20mg serve and are dedicated to achieving the highest professional and ethical standards.

Pursuit of Excellence encourages funeral homes to further the educational and professional development of their staffs, create innovative ideas to better serve families and the community, and consistently strive for excellence.

Flexible and affordable application process makes international recognition possible for any size firm.

Presumably our own NAFD has considered such a scheme. If it hasn’t, it might do well to. 

The eleventh commandment is ‘don’t get caught’

8 October 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, National Association of Funeral Directors

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

What a time it’s been for the funeral industry on the tellybox. Apologies made and inquiries launched by Co-operative Funeralcare after Channel 4’s Dispatches: Undercover Undertakers. Ditto by Funeral Services Partnership-owned Gillman Funeral Service after ITV’s Exposure: The British Way of Death.

These spy camera investigations of sneaky sales practices and disrespect for corpses were partly balanced by a more positive representation of the industry in BBC2’s Dead Good Job, which included an insight into the fast-paced work of a Muslim undertakers.

And we still have to look forward to a documentary for Sky, which will feature the recent Good Funeral Guide Awards at the Joy of Death festival, not to mention our very own Charles Cowling who has collaborated tirelessly with the show’s makers, Sharp Jack Media.

I’ve recently posted a couple of fluffy blogs about funereal fashion and the ubiquity of skulls on everything from cushion covers to cufflinks. This trend, coupled with all the media attention, leads to the question, is there something deathly in the air at the moment?

It’s probable that, while the industry seems to insiders to be in the media spotlight, the public-at-large will be less pre-occupied by the exposés. They no doubt have enough concerns about their own work, bank balances and home lives. Besides, even prime-time documentaries receive only moderate viewing figures in this age of multi-channels and internet distractions. And this week’s Exposure arguably trumps last week’s as an attention-grabber: the reputation of the late oddball national treasure Jimmy Savile is destroyed by revelations he sexually abused under-age girls. His not-so-old grave in Scarborough is now under police guard.

The trouble with our oft-brutal modern age is many people become almost numb to disgraceful behaviour all around, from the top to the bottom of society. Today’s equivalent of Yes, Prime Minister is The Thick Of It, a compulsively ghastly comedy exposing the corruption of contemporary government ‘public service’ which makes charming the gentle spoofing of the ineptitude of yesteryear.

However, the rash of forever-Google-able media attention will no doubt mean funeral service anecdotes will be spreading by word-of-mouth during ‘did-you-see…?’ pub chats, and words such as ‘hub’, ‘leakage’ and ‘hygiene treatments’ will be a bit more familiar.

When another institution close to my heart got a justified slamming for totally mishandling cases of sexual deviance in its midst, I believe the shaming had a positive, humbling effect. I’m optimistic that complacent managers at undertakers—big and small—will have also learned lessons from the recent exposés, and standards will now improve. The eleventh commandment of ‘don’t get caught’ is a terribly jaded and cynical approach to life.

But I’ll close with an observation that the National Association of Funeral Directors’ Code of Practice for members focuses on the rights of funeral consumers, or the living rather than the dead. It says nothing about how to store the dead, or how to conduct oneself while preparing a body. It says nothing about racist or sexist gallows humour directed towards corpses, as caught on the documentaries’ cameras.

The code reveals, however, that NAFD is not naive of human flaws, the desire of businesspeople to maximise profits, sometimes by deceiving clients made vulnerable by bereavement or lack of savvy. It says, for example, funeral directors should “have readily-available price lists covering the basic funeral and all other types of coffins, caskets and services provided”.

It even demands FDs
 “refrain from soliciting funeral orders or offering or giving any reward for recommendation to persons or organisations such as health service establishments, nursing homes or coroners’ offices, etc.”

It wouldn’t have included these codes, had it not been aware of such dodgy practices. Both codes are clearly breached by members. I don’t blame NAFD for not including explicit clauses about backroom practices though. The media corporation for which I work gives new employees a fat staff manual which goes into great detail about workplace ethics, including everything from racist, sexist and homophobic bullying to hanky panky on premises. I’m glad to say I’m surrounded by educated colleagues who behave decently without even having to study the small print guidelines.

Undertakers, whether big enough to have HR departments or not, should be able to regulate their staff without making a public declaration about it. Modern life doesn’t have to be rubbish.

Trade association carrots and sticks

1 October 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: National Association of Funeral Directors, SAIF

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

The annual subscription renewal request has arrived in my in-tray for the media association to which my publishing company employer belongs. What do we get for the membership fee? Aside from a glitzy awards ceremony and occasional parties enabling us to ‘network’ with amicable rivals, the association aims to support by giving tips on current practices that might boost revenue.

This advice comes in various guises. We’re sent a magazine focusing on industry news and media developments. Ironically, this publication was beaten by NAFD’s Funeral Director Monthly in the Magazine of the Year category of the Trade Association Forum’s 2012 Best Practice Awards. TAF is a trade association for trade associations!

Information is also forthcoming via forums where speakers lecture on new media trends, or via more practical tip-offs: I once had a call informing me the Masonic Association of Grand Lodges was inviting pitches from publishers for the tender of its membership journal. We politely declined as it wasn’t a natural fit with our existing portfolio and skill sets!

The point I’m leading to here is that trade associations can be in a tricky position if they’re expected to discipline rather than nurture their paying members. They tend to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, hoping members strive to follow the good examples. The media has a separate body for penal action, the Press Complaints Commission. And like the funeral industry, the media is largely self-regulating as bad practice should be bad for business.

But while any consumer of the media can lodge a complaint, what’s the best approach for consumers of the funeral industry? Their MP, the media, Citizens Advice? Or a UK equivalent of the US Funeral Consumers Alliance, a not-for-profit consumer advice and advocacy service? One good reason why GFG resists any tribal name-calling of the ‘I wish these conventional funeral directors weren’t here, this should only be for progressives’ variety. Whatever the consumer chooses, how they are served comes first. Go forth and multiply. 

Problem solved

21 September 2012
Charles
31 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare, National Association of Funeral Directors

When Co-operative Funeralcare reported itself to the NAFD in the aftermath of Channel 4’s Undercover Undertaker, it is doubtful whether the industry’s major trade body greeted the ploy with glee. A problem shared is a problem doubled. 

Was it really necessary for Funeralcare to hand themselves in? Inasmuch as the film revealed practices which fell far short of consumers’ expectations of an undertaker, no — obviously. It was clear what they should have done: they should have said sorry. To the public. They needed to have a conversation with the public. 

Why then did they hand themselves in? Presumably they had considered the Cleggalike hands-in-the-air option of apologising and rejected it in the hope of something less disagreeable. They pinned their hopes on the wording of the NAFD code of practice to make it better.

The code of practice is the instrument used by the NAFD to fend off those who would apply external regulation to the funeral industry. Its purpose is to require funeral directors to “observe at all times the basic rights of clients as consumers. To render good service at all times and make fair charges in respect of services rendered and for merchandise supplied.” It is the self-policing manual. 

The NAFD’s  Code of Practice Committee and Professional Standards Board ground into action to consider the case. The review remit was established. According to the report in NAFD house magazine Funeral Director Monthly, “It needs to be understood that the NAFD perspective in considering the programme content has a clear objective to relate the issues raised in the programme to the Rules and Guidelines and the Code of Practice of the Association.”

The first snag they encountered was that standalone hubs are not covered by the code because the code is out of date. The code only covers hubs which incorporate a retail funeral operation — ie, a shop: “The NAFD Rules require that Category A) and B) members notify us of all trading outlets, ie main offices and branches, coming under the membership trading name. Accepting that this requirement has been in the Rules in this form for many years means that, with present day modes of operation, premises as portrayed in the programme do not need to be notified to the NAFD.” (Our bold)

Whoops. (Something stronger, perhaps?)

The report in FD Monthly does not describe with what embarrassment, if any, this was acknowledged. However, Funeralcare helpfully came forward with an undertaking: “It was readily agreed by Funeralcare that the NAFD would be provided with  details of all such “Hub” units operated by Funeralcare, and that we now have immediate access to them at any time without giving notice. For the NAFD, it highlights a need to amend our Rules and procedures to meet the present day operating practices within our varied range of memberships, and to establish clear inspection processes in relation to all premises.”

So that’s all right, then. 

The NAFD went on to consider Funeralcare’s exhortation to its arrangers not to make known the availability of the simple funeral. Verdict? Not guilty. “The programme gave the impression, as other commentators have recently, that the NAFD Code requires funeral arrangers to discuss the availability of the Simple Funeral package with all clients as a matter of course. lt is clear from the Code wording that this is not necessarily the case.”

So there.

Actually, it’s not as bad as that. The NAFD admits it’s got a problem: “It would appear that there may be expectations from a public perception standpoint that require us all as members to consider and maybe review our approach to the Simple Funeral and how we offer it to our clients. For the NAFD, we need to give consideration as to how we strengthen our approach to the subject in the educational materials and the training options provided. The monitoring of compliance aspect is another area we can examine.”

While conceding that Undercover Undertaker was damaging, the NAFD wants to focus on positive outcomes. It asserts that “the future clients of Funeralcare will receive an enhanced service” and the NAFD will up its game a bit. 

Another storm cloud blew away subsequently in the course of a meeting with the Office of Fair Trading. “It was reassuring to know that, whilst they were aware of the programme, they did not view it as a cause for concern on their part, being comfortable in the knowledge that the NAFD has an input into resolving issues the programme raised.”

ED’S NOTE: Apologies for the less than timely treatment of this matter. It’s because we’ve been incredibly busy. Next week’s looking like a bit of a beast too, so if you’ve got something you’d like to blog off steam about, do send it in: charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk

University of death

7 December 2011
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, National Association of Funeral Directors, SAIF

Hardly anyone buying a funeral pauses to consider whether or not an undertaker is formally trained. Consumers are trusting people. They suppose that he or she is. Well, it ain’t necessarily so.

Training for funeral directors is presently in something of a dark, even unstable, place. The foundation degree course at the University of Bath is to be discontinued. Numbers of applicants for the Diploma in Funeral Directing (Dip Fd) are falling. There’s been a falling out between two providers, the NAFD and the BIFD. The NAFD course is under review. Meanwhile, the independent funeral directors’ trade body SAIF offers some training through its virtual college, the Independent Funeral Directors College.

There’ll never be a consensus about whether or not a Dip FD is worth having; a great many funeral directors reckon not, for reasons good and bad. Some say the training’s not good enough, others that you learn on the job. But an unregulated industry has to look to itself in this matter. If it is to rebuff criticism of its resistance of regulation it needs to demonstrate that regulation is unnecessary. One of the best ways of doing so is to be able to point to high levels of industry training.

As repositories of industry codes of conduct, the NAFD and SAIF might be reckoned to be the best bodies to roll out training courses at all levels. It has been suggested that this is the reverse of truth, but we can’t pin down why. Perhaps someone will tell us.

We have been aware of outsiders surveying the funeral industry recently with an eye to supplying the sort of training that forward-looking funeral directors need. There’s a pretty broad consensus that there is a business opportunity here, with the potential for considerable benefit to the industry. Dip FD courses have been strong on mechanics, less so on those areas of the job requiring emotional intelligence, a quality in greater demand now than ever. We get too many complaints here at the GFG about rotten customer service.  Down at the undertaker’s that becomes ‘total lack of empathy’. We had one on the phone yesterday (complaining about the People’s Undertaker, you guessed). 

Just when we were wondering what would happen next, along comes Green Fuse together with the newly-formed Chester Pearce Associates offering their own Dip FD course. At first glance it looks a bit heavy on mechanics: “Caring for the body and mortuary practice – Removals from different places – Dressing and presenting for viewing – Safe handling and health and safety” but industry insiders will probably reckon these to be hallmarks of credibility. Less reassuring may be that the course is not externally accredited. But Green Fuse has an excellent track record as a training provider with an emphasis on developing emotional intelligence. They are well placed to offer themselves to the industry. If this leads to competition among training providers, that would seem, from the consumer point of view, to be no bad thing. Can’t see the NAFD and SAIF having much time for it. Strategically they need to occupy the high ground; they need to be the go-to people. But Green Fuse has always handled the politics of the industry graciously and with good manners. They have the potential to do well.

Enough from us. Find out more here.

Let us know what you think.

Thanks!

Is it curtains for cardboard?

2 September 2010
Charles
12 Comments
Categories: coffins, National Association of Funeral Directors, natural burial

There are lies, damned lies and carbon footprint stats. Their most impressive feature is that they are so often counter-intuitive. Here’s an example:

Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand…recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption…  [T]hey found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Read on here.

The same sort of statistical sleight of hand can demonstrate that a coffin shipped from the other side of the world racks up the equivalent of no more than half a dozen road miles. Suffering as I do from severe and incurable innumeracy, I am ill-equipped to do more than shrug in puzzlement. I’m hoping you’re rather better than me at this sort of thing, because I’d like to ask your opinion about the following.

The National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) has published an article in its journal, the Funeral Director, titled Dispelling the myth about cardboard coffins. It makes this assertion: “Corrugated cardboard coffins may appear to present a green image and are perceived as a low cost alternative to traditional coffins, but in fact they’re not as cheap and environmentally friendly as they look, particularly if they’re made from recycled cardboard.” This dismayed me because I know Will Hunnybel at Greenfield Creations and I’ve always happily reckoned him to be a pretty straight, green sort of guy. The article goes on: “… the overall cost to the planet may be more than that of a solid pine or chipboard veneer coffin.”

That rang an alarm bell. Why would the NAFD’s environmental consultant, Martin Smith, stand a pine coffin alongside a chipboard coffin? Even a dunderhead like my good self knows that a pine coffin is carbon neutral. But what do I know?

Reading further, I find that cardboard coffin makers go about their business is a most beastly, even eco-vindictive, way: “Pine trees, from sustainable forests, provide the basic raw material … the branches are stripped off … torn into small chips and cooked in a solution of”, to cut a long story short, a lot of nasty-sounding chemicals including “sulphates, sulphides and” (can you guess?) “sulphites.”

Bastards, I hear you mutter; all that stripping and tearing and cooking, and sulphates and sulphides and sulphites. Quite so. How unlike the home life of our own, dear chipboard makers. We learn that they do it by much gentler means, “by pressing timber fibres together with glue and heat” employing “fewer chemicals, glues, energy and water than cardboard coffins.”

Friends, am I to remove Will Hunnybel and all other cardboard coffinmakers from my Christmas card list? Was I wrong to suppose that chipboard contains traces of formaldehyde? Is the bottom about to fall out of cardboard coffins?

Do leave a comment, please. This is important.

Sods’ law

16 June 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Co-op, Co-operative Funeralcare, funeral cost, National Association of Funeral Directors, SAIF, scandals

The funeral industry is right to be wary of those who claim to scrutinise it on behalf of consumers. After all, Jessica Mitford did much injury to the American funeral industry with an exposé which held it up to ridicule and focussed on price at the expense of value, and so was actually of very little use to consumers.

Jessica and her muckraking merrymaking aside, the UK funeral industry was always going to find scrutiny hard to bear both because it is unaccustomed to being held to account and because parts of it  suffer from a degree of complacency, self-importance, even, induced by customers who come through its doors, hold their hands up and say, “Tell me what to do.”

The Good Funeral Guide is guilty of having had some fun at the expense of the funeral industry. Any consumer advocate is going to be adversarial at times, and resolutely non-aligned, of course. And in the interests of readability, this blog aims not to be solemn but challenging, thought-provoking, tail-tweaking, humorous, deadly serious, thoughtful, silly and sometimes downright maverick. Entertaining. If it’s earnest you want, join me at the University of Bath on Saturday for the CDAS annual conference, entitled A Good Send-off. It won’t all be dull. Melissa Stewart of Native Woodland is speaking.

The approach I have taken to the funeral industry is to hold it to account from time to time and, where possible, engage in constructive dialogue. Where the trade bodies, NAFD and SAIF are concerned there has been very little of that. Emails are not replied to or even acknowledged. If this makes me, sometimes, waspish, who’s not to understand?

Yet my main thrust has been not to expose rottenness but to spotlight what’s best in funeral service, to sing the praises of the unsung heroes – to show consumers the way to the good guys so that they needn’t worry themselves about the bad and the awful. Those good guys are invariably independents.

For this reason I tend to be slow to respond to beastly goings on. That’s why, in the matter of Co-operative Funeralcare’s response to the SAIF IPSOS-Mori price comparison survey, I have been slow out of the blocks. I don’t get a bang out of giving Funeralcare a drubbing once in a while. It is a wearisome duty conducted on behalf of funeral consumers, socialism and the ideals of the Rochdale Pioneers.

But this latest business is as bad as it gets.

Even though the SAIF price comparison survey would seem to be 100% quantitative and 0% qualitative, even though it talks about what consumers need to know, SAIF has, along with at least three of its members, in the words of SAIF ceo Alun Tucker, “been issued with papers from the legal team representing The Co-operative Funeralcare. The documents relate to the wording in various items of SAIF literature and the content of some advertisements that members have placed in their local press. I will not comment further at this stage, as we have placed the papers in the hands of solicitors for a response to Funeralcare’s claims.”

I think we all know exactly what we reckon to that. There is no reason to overexcite Co-op lawyers by putting our thoughts into words. Justice is only very, very distantly related to the Law. They hardly ever see each other, never at funerals.

There’s worse. There are allegations from others in the industry that SAIF-affiliated suppliers of merchandise and services are coming under pressure to think carefully about who they do business with – a threat to the viability of SAIF as a trade body. Who is applying this pressure? And, as a writer to SAIF Insight, the trade body’s magazine, says, what if all this were to come into the public domain?

Well, it is in the public domain. And we reckon we know what it’s all about, don’t we? The funeral industry is not a hermetically sealed world like the illegal drugs trade. This is a matter which belongs to wider society; it needs to be aired; it is of material interest to all funeral consumers, the very people the funeral industry and the Good Funeral Guide together seek to serve.

It is because we share this common purpose that I believe we should talk to each other. We won’t always agree, but that’s not the point. So I hope I shall hear soon from spokespeople at SAIF and the NAFD.

My sincere thanks to all those of you who have contacted me with information and told me what you think. Where do we go from here?

If you want to leave a comment, please be very, very careful how you word it.

Co-op lawyers please note: I signed my house over to my wife when I cancelled my smile bank account. I am penniless. (It’s true, too, but I’m throwing it in also for readers who are members of the NAFD. They’ll see the joke.)