Quaker Social Action (150 years): Down to earth
Giles Robinson explains Quaker Social Action’s work on fairer funerals
Death is an expensive business. An average funeral bill in the UK currently sits at £3,784, almost double what it was ten years ago. This dramatic inflation is having a devastating effect. According to insurance company SunLife’s research in 2017 up to one in seven families are facing significant financial concern and are often sent into debt after a bereavement.
The challenge this situation creates for those families prompted a response by Quaker Social Action (QSA) and since 2010 the charity has organised a national helpline for people worried about the costs of a funeral. Since 2014 they have also been running a campaign on this issue.
The QSA Down to Earth project has been providing direct support to individuals and families for the past seven years. Our knowledge of the funeral market and our ability to help access any available financial support has had a big impact on households up and down the UK. Last year we reached 978 people, saving an average of £1,915 per case and securing over £130,000 from state and benevolent funds.
We realised that we had a unique credibility to speak up about the experience of people affected by the issue. This involves not just the financial impact of a funeral but also the emotional reverberations, which may include a sense of shame and stigma. We knew it was something we were able to address. When there is a death in a family, as one Down to Earth client said, people are ‘not at full strength’ and they ‘do need a very skilled kind of support’.
With support from charitable trusts, including the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, we launched the Fair Funerals campaign in 2014.
Pushing the parliamentary agenda
Whilst average funeral prices soar, state support for those struggling to get by hasn’t kept up. The Social Fund Funeral Payment was designed to cover a funeral for those who couldn’t otherwise afford it, but in the last fifteen years it hasn’t moved and we’re seeing the average pay-out come in at under forty per cent of the most basic funeral option.
Kristina, a campaign spokesperson, said: ‘I applied for a government funeral fund and was successful. Although I was grateful for the financial help, this wasn’t even enough to cover the funeral director’s deposit, which was needed before the funeral could go ahead.’
The Quaker Social Action campaign has brought the despair faced by those unable to afford a decent send-off to the government’s attention and a call for action. We have initiated four parliamentary debates, provided evidence for the Work and Pensions Select Committee Inquiry into funeral poverty and successfully requested for a working group to follow up on the recommendations made. A campaign with Carolyn Harris MP called for the introduction of a child funeral fund – seven councils scrapped their fees, Co-operative Funeralcare dropped charges for sixteen – and seventeen-year-olds and the Welsh government decided to remove all child funeral fees.
Patricia Gibson MP, during a Westminster debate on funeral poverty in June 2016, said: ‘I hope that we can all pay tribute to Quaker Social Action which, along with the Funeral Poverty Alliance, is dedicated both to raising the profile of funeral poverty as a social justice issue requiring the attention of government decision makers.’
Improving transparency
The funeral industry is unregulated and enjoys very little competitive pressure. When faced with the emotional shock of a bereavement it can be difficult to show the qualities of an astute consumer and spend time ‘shopping around’. As a result, services are often priced inconsistently from one funeral director to the next, with many customers vulnerable to paying above the odds and often unaware that they are including items they can do without.
A Down to Earth client explained: ‘At the time you are not functioning very well. Your memory is awful. Everything is ten times harder than normal. It was such a complex issue trying to find out what was the right thing to ask for.’
Our campaign has championed the rights of these vulnerable consumers by pushing the industry for greater transparency. The Fair Funerals pledge is a simple and realistic agreement, asking funeral directors to promise to recognise the difficulties people on low incomes face. They agree to ensure that they are being open and transparent from the outset, placing their most affordable options available online.
Quaker Friends at Beccles Meeting have championed the campaign, encouraging a funeral home with branches in their area and five other towns to sign our pledge. They said they had been grateful for an opportunity ‘to do something practical that might make a difference.’
We have now managed to gather signees from over thirty-five per cent of the UK’s funeral industry, including Co-operative Funeralcare. The National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD), the industry association representing 3,700 funeral homes across UK, have agreed that their members will have pricing on display and easily accessible from 2010. A partnership with Co-operative Funeralcare, who run over 1,000 funeral homes across the UK, has seen us educate their staff in implementing our pledge and helping people to find affordable funerals.
Raising public awareness
‘I was not in a position to make any decisions at that time. I would have said “yes” to whatever had been offered to me,’ Sharon, a Down to Earth client, said.
If we are lucky, most of us will only have to pay for two funerals in a lifetime. When we’re faced with organising one we’re often rushed into a complicated and expensive decision with a lot of pressure on our shoulders. We are further held back by the uncomfortable nature of a conversation around death and money – one we’ll most likely try to avoid.
Through the sharing of real-life stories, our campaign has been able to thrust funeral poverty under the spotlight, working to inform and drive public awareness of the issue. This year’s Bury the Debt call to action campaign kicked off with us leading a funeral procession through Parliament Square, coming alongside an ongoing online campaign and petition. We have successfully placed stories throughout the national media and have contributed to three prime-time consumer awareness documentaries, including ITV Tonight, which focused exclusively on funeral poverty for the first time.
What next?
2018 will be the final year of the five-year campaign. Quaker Social Action is putting its efforts now into pushing hard for governmental change with Bury The Debt and working with colleagues across other charities and institutions, with an interest in this area, to build as strong a legacy as possible for our work.
The impact of the work of Quaker Social Action can be seen in an increasing public profile for the concern and its movement from a political non-issue to something very much on the agenda. It was interesting to note that just this week one of the largest funeral companies, Dignity, announced an eight per cent drop in shares, noting: ‘What is becoming clear is that there is a growing price-conscious segment in the funeral business.’ We have no doubt that our work has played a significant part in this and that QSA has contributed to changing the landscape of funeral poverty in the UK.
Further information: www.fairfuneralscampaign.org.uk
