7 Bringing death home, empowerment through home funeral

<h3></h3> The aim of this presentation is to show people what it looks like to have a home funeral and start rich discussions about what is possible and how it works. <h3>Background</h3> I have been a funeral director for a long time and i left the industry to work in community because I felt we were not helping people the way I wanted or thought we should. I became and end-of-life doula and then got permission to open and independant community based funeral business in Tasmania which I now run from home. <h3>Main Text</h3> This presentation will be relatively simple but powerful. In the last few years I have had five of my family members die and all of them have been different deaths and all of them have had some form or another of home funeral whichI have documented. I think the best way to understand home funeral is to see what it looks like in practice and so I want to share the photos from their home funerals and tell their stories about what we did, how we did it and talk about the difference it made to us. THere are many reasons to choose home funeral, having agency in planning, feeling empowered in decision making, the community netwroks and bonds it creates but it is also financial. We all know funeral poverty is a problem and by empowering people to do things themselves and have a more active role in end of life planning and after death care, people reduce the financial burden. In home funeral, the opportunity exists for people to have better grief and bereavement outcomes (financial, social and emotional) as a result. <h3>Unique Contribution</h3> I am a Churchill Fellow and have looked around the world at communitites that have unique approaches to the human relationship to death and ceremony, my book ‘A Heartfelt Undertaking’ explores this research. What I want to present this sesison is not about the research but how it works on the ground. The knowledge from my research, put into practice in my own community. <h3>Implications</h3> If we can expand peoples thinking, educate people on what home funeral is, what it looks like and the agency and empowerment that can come from it, we have a very good opportunity to make peoples end of life planning and discussions more robust and the outcomes more equitable.