Good job

Charles 7 Comments
Charles

Behind the scenes with Down to Earth (i) from Quaker Social Action on Vimeo.

 
 

One in six UK households struggle to pay for a funeral.

UK funeral debt is worth over £130m and is rising. 

QSA seeks a funeral poverty officer to take significant steps to influence policy and practice in both government and in the market to help more people nationally who are struggling to pay for a funeral. 

This role will build on QSA’s award-winning work, Down to Earth, which helps people living on low incomes in east London to arrange a meaningful and affordable funeral.

 Quaker Social Action

Funeral poverty officer

£20,002 (28 hours per week)

More information/job pack/application forms at www.quakersocialaction.com/vacancies.

QSA1QSA2

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Poppy Mardall
10 years ago

Such great news! What a cracking and important job!

Jonathan
Jonathan
10 years ago

I support this admirable initiative. I also cautiously suppose that ‘influencing policy and practice in government and the market’ may perhaps turn out to be a good thing, though I distrust markets and governments instinctively. Good luck to whoever gets the job – please do what you can to subsidise cremation fees, for a start. East London is only a tiny place; and in the three years DtE has been going, just four hundred local families helped is a drop in a vast ocean of poverty nationwide. One in six households in Britain goes into debt over a funeral –… Read more »

Jed
Jed
10 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan

Hear! Hear! Jonathan, or Here! Here! Jonathan – in any case I wholeheartedly Agree! Agree!

Steve
Steve
10 years ago

Its time the government started to listen to the public in relation to the ever increasing cost of funeral services. How can hospital doctors charge an extra £78 for a signature on medical forms when they are already being paid for doing their chosen job in normal working hours. A nice little earner if you can get it.
I think this practice should stop immediately and the saving be passed on to the family to reduce funeral costs.

Jonathan
Jonathan
10 years ago
Reply to  Steve

I agree in principle, Steve, though as you’re aware the doctor has to examine the body – sometimes involving travel – and commit to a conclusion (which stands to be challenged if a medical referee or other doctor sees fit) about the cause of death; which in turn has to be verified by an independent opinion. Strikes me it’s worth at least grateful recognition, if not money. And it can be hard enough to get a doctor (on a hundred grand a year) to do that at all sometimes, let alone free of charge just because she happens to be… Read more »

Jonathan
Jonathan
10 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan

… although, thinking again, it is our money we’re paying them, on top of the money we already paid them to be at work in the first place… maybe the real problem is that doctors are grossly overpaid?

Our MP, Dr Sarah Wollaston, said she took a salary drop of £40,000 a year to work in Westminster, and that she couldn’t find any of her friends who’d work for as little as the £65,000 she now has to subsist on, poor dear. Perhaps she could look for some new friends? Or we could recruit some less ambitious medics?

Jennifer Uzzell
10 years ago

It is indeed an excellent job and an excellent initiative. Such a shame that it has to come from the Quakers rather than being tackled by the government off their own initiative!
There are many ways funeral costs could be reduced, I suspect. Many other ways in which funeral poverty could be addressed. Most involve systemic changes….unlikely.
So sad.