The council refuses to give the boy his father’s ashes after the funeral

“When someone dies and has no family or friends to organize their funeral, they should be able to find out from the local authority what will happen to them after they die,” she said.

“For example, will they be buried or cremated and will their wishes be respected? A bereaved person who is unable to arrange a funeral, for example because they are unable to pay for it, should be able to contact someone in the office who can advise them.”

Matthew was determined to secure his friend’s ashes for Sam. He found a funeral director who replied: “Yes, we do funerals for the commune, I have the documents here.”

There were two boxes to check in the documents. One of them read: “The family wants the ashes back” and the other: “No one wants the ashes.” “And (the person on the council) indicated that no one wants the ashes. I said, are you kidding me?

He wrote to his local MP and social services to complain, eventually securing Sam’s ashes. But it “shouldn’t have taken this long.”

“We had an orphaned 11-year-old boy and (the council) said, ‘This is the rule, you can’t take the ashes,'” he recalled. “I mean, where is the compassion?”

In 2019 – the last year for which public data is available – local authorities in the UK organized over 3,800 community funerals. Testimony recorded by QSA shows how shocking it can be to organize such people. In one case, the mother of two boys was told they could not attend their father’s funeral. In other cases, authorities told people they had no choice about whether they would be cremated or buried.

“Seeking help from council in situations like this can take courage and involve many complex emotions,” Mace said. “The process must be lawful, compassionate, simple and fair.”

More broadly, high funeral costs deepen the grief of bereaved families. The average cost of a funeral in the UK in 2023 was £4,141, an increase of 4.7% on the previous year. Meanwhile, according to the end-of-life charity, 90,000 people die in poverty every year Marie Curie.

The twin effects of bereavement and financial hardship can be “almost unbearable”, says Pauline Eaglestone. The 47-year-old lost both her parents and her sister in just a few years.

“My sister found out she had three months to live with cancer. It was a shock,” Eaglestone recalled. “She was my only sister and we were very close. I was with her all day and all night in the hospice.”

When her sister died, Eaglestone “couldn’t” mourn. “When it finally dawned on me, I remember thinking: Where the hell am I going to get money for the funeral?”

Down to Earth sent a social worker to help her arrange the relatively inexpensive service. Without them, she “would be very lost.”

“When loneliness and isolation sets in, it is very difficult,” she added. “Then worrying about money just makes it worse.”

Some names in this story have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved in this story.

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