Through the Family Lens: how death illuminates the modern family presents findings from research into the UK's Funeral Payments Scheme. The eligibility criteria for the scheme does not accurately reflect complex family relationships or changing definitions of family. Responsibility for funeral costs is decided based on normative views of family that some claimants do not fit. Claimants who want to pay for a funeral but are estranged from other family members risk being denied and saddled with debt. The research concludes that rising funeral costs, cultural unease with death, an emphasis on self-sufficiency over entitlement, and the marginalization of those who cannot afford end-of-life rituals combine to create distress around accessing support.

1. Through the Family Lens:
how death illuminates the modern family
Dr Hannah Rumble and Dr Kate Woodthorpe
Department of Social and Policy Sciences

2. Overview of paper today
• Background
• The research
• The findings
• Conclusions
• Next steps

3. Background
•Centre for Death and
Society
•Sunlife Direct

4. Funeral Payment Scheme
• Social Fund Funeral Payment
• Est. 1988, part of DWP and regulated Social Fund
• 2011/12: 69,000 applications made, 56% success rate
• Applications based on qualifying criteria (benefits)
• Capped at £700 + disbursements (cremation/burial/doctor’s fees for statutory crem
certs)
• Average award: £1241
• Average funeral costs c£3000
• Gross expenditure for DWP: £46.3m (£0.4m recovered)

5. Academic rationale for the study
• Comparisons between cultures underdeveloped in the
area of death (Robben, 2004; Walter, 2005)
• Little consideration given to political and economic
dimension of post-mortem practices, particularly issues
of affording a funeral
• In capitalist and secular societies, increasing cultural
diversity and individualism = more personalised and
individualised post-mortem practices, which cost € £ $

6. Previous research
• UK: Drakeford (1998) found economic vulnerability linked to the
need of mourners to respect the dignity and memory of someone.
• USA: Fan and Zick (2004) noted substantial economic vulnerability
of widows and widowers in relation to funeral/burial costs.
• New Zealand: McManus and Shafer (2009) uncovered a “general
lack of knowledge, misconceptions, inconsistencies and
misinformation on what funerals are about”, as well as lack of
awareness of benefit entitlement (p. 73).

7. The research
• December 2011 – March 2012
• Independent academic research
• 2 parts: UK and international
• Focus today on UK section of the study
• Research team: Dr Kate Woodthorpe, Dr Christine Valentine, Dr
Hannah Rumble, Caron Staley (CDAS manager)

8. Further detail
• Scope: to identify how the Department for Work and Pension’s
(DWP) Funeral Payments Scheme (SFFP) works in terms of:
• Process of application
• Experience of application
• Interviewed 60 participants (claimants, funeral directors, MPs,
stakeholders and local authority employees)
• Unexpected strand of the project: Public Health Funerals (aka.
‘Pauper Funerals’, administered by Local Authorities)

9. The findings
• Eligibility and responsibility
• Familial relationships

10. The findings: eligibility and responsibility
• Eligibility criteria for FP does not reflect complex family
relationships nor accommodate fluid boundaries of ‘family’. In short,
the FP regulations for identifying the ‘claimant’ (the person judged
responsible for funeral expenses) is based on normative and
hegemonic understandings of ‘family’
• The way in which responsibility for a funeral is decided by the DWP
does not mean that family member who wants to take responsibility
will be the one who is obliged to. (Eligibility vs. Responsibility)
• Those claimants who want to pay for a funeral, but who are
estranged from other family in work, can find their claim rejected
leading to being left with funeral debt.

11. The findings: familial relationships
Kin solidarity: reliance by the state on families ‘to do the
right thing’
“I think basically they [the DWP] are relying on family
values. The fact that you wouldn’t want to see your
mother just lying on a slab forever and a day. They are
not going to pay you because they know, one way or
another, by hook or by crook, you will find a way of
burying your mother, your brother, your sister, your
father, yes? They are relying on that, that… you will go
out of your way to see that person laid to rest.”

12. Conclusion: UK in context
• Market led funeral sector with ever-rising funeral costs
• Culture of not talking about death
• Emphasis on welfare dependency rather than entitlement
• Increasingly marginalised population who cannot afford a funeral at
point of need
• Issues with the Social Fund’s FP creates distress, confusion and
funeral debt

13. Next steps
• November 28th: Parliamentary Roundtable
• Thinking Allowed!
• Publications - Our research reports are available from
Sun Life Direct/AXA website:
Woodthorpe, K., Valentine, C., and Rumble, H. (2012) Affording a Funeral. Final Report
to Sunlife Direct.
Woodthorpe, K., Valentine, C., and Rumble, H. (2012) Social Welfare Provision for
Funeral Costs: an International Perspective. Final Report to Sun Life Direct.
• Future research:
What can funerals tell us about contemporary family
relationships/understandings of kinship?

14. Thank you for your time today
Any questions?
h.rumble@bath.ac.uk
k.v.woodthorpe@bath.ac.uk