Death Care Industry Panel Discussion 2022

Lea-Ann McNeill
Welcome, everyone, to the latest OpusXenta in Conversation series of webinars. I imagine we are still waiting on quite a few people to join us, but we had a really great response to this webinar, and I think that’s probably reflective, I suppose, of the sign of the times in terms of people starting to be really keen and positive around conversations, around death and dying, which I think this panel would certainly agree is a good thing.

Before we get into, I guess, the start of the webinar, and I introduce our panel to you. Just wanted to cover off on a couple of housekeeping items. Firstly, we have a couple of features with our Zoom webinars and for those of you familiar with Zoom, across the bottom of the screen, you’ll have both a chat function and a Q and A function. This is an interactive panel discussion, so please feel free to post any questions or comments that you have. We try to get questions and comments coming through the Q and A function, so if you can put them through the Q and A function, that would be great. We try and keep the chat function for anybody that might be having any technical difficulties. So, try and remember to use the Q and A function, if you can. Also, we are recording this webinar. So, once again, as we were talking as a group here, before everybody started to reactive industry, there’s many people that will be out there working today and we want to be able to make this available to them as well later. So, the webinar is, in fact being recorded.

All right, so I might introduce, I guess, the topic of today’s discussion and our panel to you. As I mentioned, we wanted to run this panel around the concept of Dying to Know Day, which, of course, was held earlier this month. I think it’s really important, having worked in the cemetery industry myself before joining OpusXenta, that people are having conversations around a good death and how they want not only their death, but also those activities post their death to happen. And I think it’s important for families and friends to be having those conversations. And I think we again, we’re talking as a panel about the fact that that seems to be growing, which is really positive. There are a couple of changes from the original panel that we sent out. I think that’s the climate of today, Adrienne, we’re having a conversation of people about people with covid, flus and everything else that’s going on. So, there were a few changes that had to be made. But I think we’ve brought together a wonderful panel, actually, from right across the industry, so it will be a good conversation today. So, just to introduce everybody, Helen, if you’d like to give us a little wave.

Helen Callanan is a Death Doula, but she’s also the founder and the Managing Director and, I guess lead educator for a company called Preparing the Way. And I think, Helen, we really look forward to your insights. And the Death Doula’s, probably for many out there, would still be seen as a very modern phenomena. So it will be interesting to see or get your thoughts around a range of issues today.

Lea-Ann McNeill
So, Adrienne has been with the funeral industry, I suppose, around 20 years now. Currently, she holds a dual role as both the branch manager and the resident officer for K.M. Smith Funeral Directors. Adrienne, like me, is based here in the Brisbane area. Welcome, Adrienne.

Adrienne Ryan
Thank you.

Lea-Ann McNeill
It’s lovely to reconnect with Elham Day again. I had some involvement with Elham and the wonderful people of Hummingbird House a few years ago. So, if you’ve never heard of Hummingbird House, just sort of on the north side of Brisbane, I think you’re the only hospice of your type in Queensland still, Elham. And for those of you that have not heard, they provide specialised paediatric palliative care. It’s a beautiful facility that I’ve had the pleasure of visiting. And again, a beautiful, more caring group of people I don’t think you could meet. So welcome, Elham.

Elham Day
Thank you.

Lea-Ann McNeill
And last but not least, the lovely Michael Robertson. Michael is the newly appointed CEO down at the Adelaide Cemetery Authority. But having said that, Michael, I think you’ve been based down at Adelaide Cemetery well over ten years, correct?

Michael Robertson
Yes, it’s been a good time.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yes. Congratulations. Although I think I’ve seen you a number of times now since your formal appointment. But congratulations on behalf of everybody here. It’s lovely to have you still around, that’s for sure. So, there’s our panel and I think maybe by way of an initial, I guess, comment I wanted to ask if there was one thing that you could pinpoint or one observation that you have around the way the death care industry is changing or has changed. You’ve all been in the industry for a little while. What’s that one observation that you would pinpoint? And, Helen, I might start with you again.

Helen Callanan
Yeah, sure, of course. Hi, everybody. Great to be here. Thanks for inviting us to OpusXenta. So, the thing that I’m seeing emerging more and more and so, to give a bit of context, we train end of life and death doulas across Australia and New Zealand. So, we’ve got over 500 that are out there doing this work. And so we hear back from them. And what I’m seeing is a real emergence and increase in the level of death literacy through events like this. So, an increase in the level of death literacy. So, people being more informed. Knowing their legal rights. Knowing their choices are available. So, they’re starting to choose more and more to engage in what we call home based after death care. Home based funeral care. Where the family is leading that care. Rather than going through some of the more formal or conventional manners. People also bringing people home to die at home. Surrounded by their family. Rather than in that medicalised environment. If you like. Starting to move slightly away from the more. If you like, conventional. And that’s not for everybody, of course, but some people are doing that, and both medical care, but also not that they’re not still getting medical care. Of course, they are, but they’re doing it at home where possible, and also after death and funeral care.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Adrienne, I guess that observation, from what we would say would be, I guess, the conventional Funeral Director industry?

Adrienne Ryan
Yeah, we’ve been around since 1886. So started by a woman, by the way, a widow, six kids and a business. Exactly. And so, it’s just reflecting when we’re talking about these issues. When we first started, it was an Undertaker and then it was only burials that you could do, and then cremations were introduced. And so suddenly it became a Funeral Directors because that showed that you could do both burials and cremations. And we’re sort of in a similar time now where there’s just a change of options. You know, when you say funeral now, you no longer have an image of a church and a hearse and a priest and a burial, possibly cremation. You’ve now got a whole range of options that are really just dependent on a person’s choices. As we keep talking about more and more, it’s choice, but I think the most important word is really comfortable, is that people are feeling more comfortable with doing their own thing or with even asking the question, because certainly we’ve always been even though we’re a traditional funeral home, personalisation has always been part of what we do. But a lot of the time the decision making for what you’re going to do with the funeral happens after someone has died.

You’ve got a whole lot going on at that time, which means it changes how comfortable you might feel about making a decision or a choice. And so sometimes, unless you’ve had an open discussion or had some lead up to considerations, you often end up doing what everyone else does. So, until it becomes more normal to do the things that Helen was talking about, then people it’s in a bit of a time of change.

Lea-Ann McNeill
I think I wrote down while you were speaking there, Adrienne, that notion of ever evolving, even if it’s just terminology from an Undertaker to a Funeral Directors, it’s ever evolving. Michael, I might quickly jump to you about your single option, because I guess from that cemetery cremator perspective, ever evolving is a great way to describe certainly what’s been happening, even physically on the ground at Adelaide Cemeteries.

Michael Robertson
Yeah, definitely. We’ve been seeing some changes within the South Australian market and certainly the environment is becoming an ever-important factor to a burial or a cremation. Adelaide cemetery was the first to introduce the natural burial in Australia as well. That was around 2008. And while it’s a niche market in the burial area, families there are really passionate about that impact and that footprint that they’re going to be leaving behind. And also with our new facility that we’re currently building as well, it will be the first in Australia to have European standards of filtration to the cremators as well. While it’s a bit of an industrial sort of talk aspect and that side of things, the air that’s coming out of the flu stack of the cremator is as clean as the air that you’re breathing today. There’s nothing coming out, it’s all captured, and it’s actually then recycled as well. That has been a major interest and people have been talking about that and understanding that if they are doing a cremation, how can you do it cleaner as well? But then, of course, you’ve got new technologies as well coming into the industry.

I think it was Desmond Tutu passed away and cremation or resume really a hot topic of conversation. And people with that environmental conscious sort of decision, we’re asking those questions as well.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah, and I guess that notion of environment is something I’d really like to come back and talk to you a bit more about as the panel goes on, because it’s an interesting conversation and it perhaps reflects a little bit of what you were saying, Adrienne. People are needing to make some of these decisions early and sometimes what they think what they want to do isn’t necessarily what happens when the rubber hits the road, so to speak. And some of the decisions around family, which I think goes to your point, Michael, about the fact that it’s a niche market. There’s a lot of conversation about environment, but when it actually happens? Are people really heading down that road or still sticking with some of the more traditional forms? So let’s talk some more about that. I want to jump to you, Elham, I guess your single observation. I know you work a lot with families around that palliative care space. A single observation there for you around how the industry has changed or is moving.

Elham Day
For sure, and in order to not repeat, but sort of maybe contribute what everyone said, but offer maybe a bit of attention to that. I think while it’s great that we’re seeing this rise in what gets often labelled death literacy, people becoming more familiar, at least with these things as options, even though it was just highlighted, there are niche pockets within a much broader industry, I think something that we see affecting and facing families across the board that we support. Like, yes, we offer that. I think what’s quite unique, our offer of after death care is kind of almost straddling that health care system and more of that home based or doula kind of things. But I suppose the piece I want to highlight, the single piece that I would want to highlight would be after death literacy and before there’s a need for grief literacy. And that’s often where we see families really left without wider community support. So our vision at Hummingbird House, I think is wonderful, but I think it’s ridiculously ambitious, as vision should be, and that’s every family in Queensland connected to a community that knows how to care for them in life, in illness, death and bereavement.

And while there are many benefits to the advances that have happened in health care systems around caring for people towards serious illness and towards the end of life, one of the things that has happened is that medicalisation has also translated to how people experience grief and the very natural experience of grief after any death. It’s a very natural part of life. But especially now, because of the fallen rates, we should all celebrate that less children die now than 50 years ago and certainly 100 years ago. But what has been lost in that is maybe some of the knowledge of understanding that while it might be the most heartbreaking thing many of us can imagine that would happen to a parent. To a family. It was also true that families and communities used to know how to be with that kind of an experience. Whereas these days people are almost too terrified to talk to a parent or a sibling. I see this schools, I see school teachers thinking they need to bring a psychiatrist in at the start, not because there’s already a presenting problem, but because child death is present. I see this with parents who feel like their friends and community tell them, this is too complex, this is too specialist, you need a psychiatrist.

Go right to the top of the medical hierarchy. There’s no criticism. Psychiatry and psychology play a valuable role in the mental health system. It’s not setting up an either or. But really what we see is this challenge for families going back into their lives and into their communities, not being met with a community that knows how to care for them.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Maybe to think about that even a little bit further, I guess, that notion of community. I’m going to make a very generic observation we’ve outsourced so much of our lives, we outsource everything. I’m constantly amazed by the outsource dating apps that they’ll pair people up. We’ve outsourced all of this care. And look, I’m the first to say, well, the rest of the panel already knows this, but I wasn’t sure if you heard the conversation before you joined. I lost my husband earlier this year and in his final week they actually asked me. I had had him at home at different times in that six weeks. And if I’m brutally honest, it was horrific. I felt so out of my depth and in his last week, they asked me if I wanted to take him home so that he could die at home. And again, we discussed that and I was terrified by the concept. And I wonder though, if some of that goes back to your comment about community, because we used to manage a lot of these things as extended families, as part of communities. And my observation of Hummingbird House that’s a little of what you provide is that it’s kind of not a hospital and it’s not home either, but it provides that community that supports both the death and then what happens afterwards.

What’s your comment about that kind of outsourcing, I suppose, of palliative care, for want of a better word?

Elham Day
Yeah, look, it’s a huge question and a very important one. And so, what I’d like to do is maybe I speak generally and direct to some resources that people can find out more information about these things and then I can speak specifically to our experience at Hummingbird House and what it is that we offer in the day to day. So earlier this year, probably, I would say the most landmark kind of global report into the value of Death and the value of community and social death and dying. And the Lancet Commission released a report called The Value of Death bringing death back into life. And so, this was put together by a global network of scholars who are really active in what often gets called compassionate communities or public health palliative care. And so, what that’s really highlighting is that in the 21st century, the story of dying is really one of paradox. So in what typically gets called the Global North, where we would bump Australia and New Zealand kind of into that. In the Global North, many people are overtreated in the hospital and healthcare system. We often see kind of futile or treatments being put in, even to the last hours of death.

And then the community and family are sort of marginalised away. So that person is often isolated in hospital, even more so since COVID. But then in the Global South, there are many people still dying from preventable conditions without access to even basic pain management, pain medication, and where the family and community are still carrying kind of disproportionate amount of burden, it’s kind of necessary to really place it in a global context. First. The Lancet report does that really well. And then in terms of the social history of dying, Allan Kellehear has a great book by that name that sort of traces right back in kind of our history. That outsourcing piece I could speak to then, yes, that’s true, but not because oftentimes it can be. These stories of demonising either the healthcare system or the funeral industry is like kind of coming into this. I think it’s been more as a result of pressures of modern life, we could say largely economic and productivity. This kind of drive for proficiency and to keep moving, which, to jump back to my previous point, absolutely affects people’s grief experience as well. If you’re still grieving after even two, three months, it’s like, come on, get back to so called normal.

That outsourcing, yes, has definitely happened, but I think the factors that contribute it to it are really complex. So, what that has meant is, I think that people are dying typically in Australia, and we talk about if we talk about the adult population rather than just children, people are dying later in life and people’s dying is more extended and longer. So, it’s not really, I think, as simple as saying that it would just be better if more people simply had access to be able to die at home. Because often all of the other contributing factors that have led to that outsourcing mean that people don’t have, this knowledge has been lost and subjugated. And so preparing the way and the way that Helen does should be really celebrated. I just saw they have a nationally accredited training now, and that’s sort of bring back that knowledge that was once held traditionally. And the same way, I think, the funeral companies and Funeral Directors that we work with, it’s actually very rare for us now to meet a Funeral Director that comes in and says, well, this is the package and this is how this needs to be their understanding.

They need to work in more of a family centred way. Often families that come from have strong ties to traditional cultural backgrounds, have a framework to support them that already is there. So I think it’s very kind of multilayered, really, and I think we should recognise again what we could call the Global North that knowledge is needing to be brought back in. But there are many parts and many cultures in the world where that continuation of care was never lost. That kind of village mentality was never lost. That doesn’t have the resources often that are in the more developed countries. But there is this continuity of knowing how to care for the soul, both of the individual and of the community.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah, and I think, like you say, culture is probably something that well, yeah, I think some of the Western populations probably tend to be losing some of that. Like you say, Helen, I might kind of jump to you because the notion of death doulas is something that, as I said, we tend to hear more and more of. Is it seen as something that’s trendy and newly emerged? Is it going to have an ongoing kind of place or is it just the thing that’s the thing of the moment in the industry. Helen, you talked about the fact that we have this ageing population and some of the care services that go along with that. You only have to watch the media to see that some of those care services are struggling and, in many respects, failing. Do you think something like the notion of a death doula who is able to support people possibly in their homes as a person is dying is going to be a great support, I guess, in the absence of some of these care services.

Helen Callanan
That’s for me, that question?

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah, sorry, Helen.

Helen Callanan
So, absolutely. Oh, wow. Thank you, Elham, for what you just said. It just speaks to me, and I so agree. There’s so much layer of complexity and we have outsourced a lot and through need some of it. But as you say, there’s been a cost to that, and that is that we’ve lost our competence and our confidence to take care of our dying and our ageing and our grieving. So as end of life doulas or something we’re really committed to here at Preparing the Way is about empowering the doulas and supporting them to go out and do what they feel called to do in their communities, which is make a difference. Right, so absolutely. It’s not just a flavour of the month interest Lea-Ann, end of life doulas, death doulas really have been around since day dot. They’re well known throughout Europe, very big in the USA, Canada, UK, and it’s emerging as a profession here in Australia. Truthfully, there have been doulas doing great work around and you don’t have to do all of the training. There are great doulas out there who’ve done next to no, they’ve just done it through years and through the person in their family or their community who’s been doing this.

But absolutely, the thing that we talk about at Preparing the Way that a doula makes available that’s quite unique across the entire life spectrum and Natural Grace, is a holistic Funeral Directors here in Victoria that we work very closely with and are part of the accredited training that we’ve developed. They created these ten stages of life and one of the things we talk about as end of life doulas is that we actually are able to accompany a person, a family, a community on all of the way through those ten stages. So, you might be well, living well, everything’s just ticking along and you go, you know what, I want to get my plans in place in case something happens. I’m working with families now where there is a death coming and it’s not here yet. But they’re like, you know what, we need to make our plans for this. So I’m working deeply with them. Then diagnosis happens. So sometimes I work with someone from diagnosis right through. I’ve worked with people for three years and I’m the one constant because the diagnostic team come and drop off, the treatment team come and drop off, the palliative care team come and drop off, the funeral team come and drop off, so people are continually left bereft of support.

So as an end-of-life Doula, we’re one of the unique roles. We’re nonclinical, non-medical. We’re there for support, education, resources, listening, caring, accompanying, championing people and as we say, giving people back the three C’s choice, capacity and control and letting people make their choices informed.

So, we’re not going anywhere. And that’s why now, as Elham said and thank you for the acknowledgement, Elham, we now have the world’s first national accreditation in end-of-life doula training and we’re very proud of that.

Lea-Ann McNeill
That’s wonderful. And I think maybe, I think the role of a doula just from what you’ve described is almost putting back the community for some of these people who might not have had it.

Helen Callanan
Yes, it’s about bringing back and bridging some of the service gaps that are there. As I always say, I can’t do my job without really great medical and nursing care and support because most people at end of life need some level of medical and nursing . But there’s a lot of other aspects to palliative care that don’t necessarily have a medical or nursing need so as end of life doulas we can absolutely work with allied other people and provide that extra.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Provide that…

Helen Callanan
And help think of you with your husband. You were terrified. That breaks my heart to hear that it’s understandable. What if you had a doula there that could help you navigate that and get the supports in place so you could go you know what? We actually would like that, we think.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s what you talk about when we start to talk about options and what people are comfortable with. Adrienne, you use that word comfortable. I want to speak now, Adrienne, about I guess the funeral industry. And it’s probably fair to say that the poor old funeral industry has probably copped it a little bit in the last kind of maybe twelve months, probably even a little bit more ongoing than that. And I guess for people that don’t work in the industry, they don’t necessarily see or truly understand the actual, I guess, the complexity, I think, of the role of a Funeral Director and what it is that they can actually provide for families. But one of the things I think everybody is starting to talk about here is this notion of personalisation, whether that you care about the environment or dying at home or whatever, those sorts of things. It’s not cookie cutter, so to speak, anymore. What are you seeing in the funeral industry now around that notion of personalisation and how are Funeral Directors are supporting kind of that space?

Adrienne Ryan
Okay, so I feel like the personalisation of funeral is actually relatively, a new thing. Like once religion has for many people, they might have been born a particular religion, but they’re not practising. And so, when it comes to dying, the religion isn’t the one that’s actually looking after everything for them. And so, when you have the absence of the trajectory that you would be on if you were in the community of a religious organisation, be it Catholic or Muslim or Buddhist, whatever it is, if you’ve got a religious aspect to your life, you’ve got a community in your life. And for a lot of people, when the religious aspect has become more private, less community, less public, then it means when it comes to a funeral, you’re not going to have it in a religious setting. But now it’s not even that you’re going to have it in a cremator chapel setting. You want to have it in somewhere that’s actually familiar for you in life. So that might be at a beach, it might be in a backyard, it might be a graveside service in the cemetery, like one of Michael’s beautiful ones in Adelaide.

It could be that you actually have a cremation and then you go, and you bury the ashes in the cemetery, in a grave, instead of having the physical coffin and body and everything present there. So, the personalisation is really about a Funeral Director, as I believe all good Funeral Directors have always had the capacity to listen to families and to truly listen to what they may not be saying as much as what they are saying. So, our role has, in that way, never really changed. But what has very much changed for Funeral Directors is the fact that we’re now more event organisers than ever before. Because equally, when religion had a lot to do with how we celebrated death or dealt with death, as far as the funeral went, we had our roles to play too, and they were very set. Family had their role to play very set, and the clergy had their role very set. So once these things were untethered, then all of us, our roles have changed. And so we now also audio-visual experts, being able to look at dealing with equipment and dealing with producing things for people to a very high quality in a very short space of time.

And so. Yeah, there’s a lot of challenges for us to be able to always do what we’ve done, which is listen, and then to really meet the needs of a family individually, personalising it. That’s really where personalisation the word itself is about one person to another. It’s about people and about really in that very simple way, because we can talk about all of the wonderful things you can do. And that’s true, like, there are many choices and options, but the thing is for someone to literally feel very comfortable that they’re saying goodbye to somebody in the way that they feel is true and what’s needed. And as a Funeral Director, the last thing that we do is actually add up the cost of what they might be wanting to do. We’re certainly not cost focused. And I know that there is a lot, and there always has been in the media, because death has never been cheap, no matter what. It’s a lot of money to die depending on what you choose to do. But it doesn’t have to be expensive to be a beautiful funeral and there’s only basic things that you need to have.

Everything else is a disbursement added on top of it, that you can have as much involvement or as little involvement in the outsourcing of life. You can outsource putting together a funeral video to us as a Funeral Director. You can outsource the flowers, or you can say, you know what, we’re just going to gather them from the garden. You know what? We’re going to cut up Mom’s dresses and we’re going to make bunting and we’re going to put that all around everywhere at home. It’s endless. But I feel like the most important thing for people to realise is that the fact is, I love the ten steps that you were talking about with the life cycle and the sooner that we realise that death is actually a normal part of life and not something that’s a rude shock, with respect, because honestly, you have to have respect, because we’re all under a bubble that can easily mean that we don’t want to know something. That’s just the only thing we really do know, and that is that death is normal. And it may not be as normal for babies to die at the moment as what it was when Kate Mary first started our business. That was a huge part. Looking after infant mortality was a part of life that touched many, many families, so it was normal. And because it doesn’t touch as many families, it’s now not normal. But I feel like those sorts of things are what really get in the way of us being able to as communities and as all of the different providers within that community, really being able to do what’s there to be done with grace. (Lea-Ann’s dog barks) There you go. Thank you for your question.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Michael, let me jump over to you because obviously we’re having a lot of conversations here about choice. Are you seeing that in the cemetery and cremator industry as well? Because obviously we’ve seen cremations on the rise. We’ve seen the unattended cremations or unattended services occurring. So is this notion of choice creeping into the cemetery industry as well?

Michael Robertson
Yes, without doubt. If I sort of went back to, I remember a long time ago, a Funeral Directors said to a group of us saying, I’ll tell you what a good funeral is and it was; an entry song, two people eulogy celebration of life and an exit song. And that sort of aspect has well and truly changed with people. Some people will love that and that’s what they want. As Adrienne says, some of these things are quite traditional and that fits. Some people, a lot more are now actually asking those questions and saying, could I have simpler things. Can we just have catering, or can we do other aspects? Can we have it outside? We had a service for an actual burial up at Smithfield, and they didn’t want the, it was only for a small amount of people to be there for a personal service. It was still live streamed with a portable AV system, and it looked absolutely fantastic. The backdrop was on the lake of our cemetery there and it just really personalised it for that family and it made it a personal, and more, a nicer memory I would think, for that family. We’ve certainly seen, but we’ve also seen the no service, what we call the no service, someone has passed away and they are cremated.

But that’s not to say that they’re going to be forgotten, it’s also to say that’s given them now time to be able to do something that’s really more memorable for that family, to be able to say they feel that it’s potentially given them time to be able to do something more meaningful with their loved one as well. But we’ve also seen, like our gardens change over the years. People come into Enfield Memorial Park or Smithfield Memorial Park. These are not traditional cemeteries anymore. You know people will look through it and go, and some people have said, I’ve never come in here, but it doesn’t remind me of a cemetery. It’s so green, it’s so botanical. We’ve got gardens where we’ve designed like water features and they’re a lovely calming effect in that aspect. There’s a lot of trees or rolling hills. The thought there was, if a family is coming to visit a loved one later on and their children are coming as well, sometimes they’re not truly understanding, but they don’t want to be having to stand there and be still. So, we created areas where my joy is to see if one of the children rolling down the hills sort of thing, they can actually make a fun environment for themselves.

And again, it’s not scaring them off of coming into a memorial park or a cemetery. They will actually, hopefully have good memories in that aspect. And if they want to take their shoes and socks off and wade through our water feature in that Cascades garden, again, that’s something that is a memorable aspect for a family, and it’s trying to not scare and not sort of make it this sort of nerve wracking event. And if you’re using one of our gardens, you’re using that garden for a long time, and you want it to be just a really great experience. You want to remember your loved ones and that environment, and that backdrop is certainly a good piece to it as well.

Lea-Ann McNeill
And we’re saying, I know a lot of cemeteries are actually putting playgrounds into their cemetery now. So, we’re actually seeing these play spaces for children.

Michael Robertson
Yeah, we’re putting in, for our new development, we’re putting in a nature playground out front. And that’s actually not just to… the cemetery space is also changing as well. We have people walking their dogs. We have people learning how to drive on the weekends. They come out with their mum and dad or even the driver instructor, come out with people and learn how to drive because it’s a nice sort of quieter area.

Lea-Ann McNeill
I used to get nervous about my old headstones. At the cemetery I used to watch the learner drivers.

Michael Robertson
And people are learning how to ride their bikes, Enfield is a real key in that aspect for this local community. It is a very large green space that you should be using now as well. So, we’re introducing the cafe and nature playground, and that’s not just for people who are using our services for a memorial or visiting a funeral service. It’s for the local community to use the grounds, today and tomorrow and into the future as well.

Lea-Ann McNeill
And I think I feel a little bit like we’ve kind of come full circle because what I’m hearing is that cemeteries are trying to provide that community for people in life.

Michael Robertson
Correct.

Lea-Ann McNeill
So that notion of death, like you said, Adrienne, is not this rude shock. We’re comfortable with that notion of being in a cemetery. It’s not the scary, haunted place behind the great big wrought iron fence anymore. So, again, it’s just that notion of breaking down the stigma associated with death and dying. I know COVID has been talked about to death, pardon the pun. And actually, before I say this, because we haven’t had any questions coming through, so obviously we’ve got the audience absolutely captivated at the moment. So, I’m okay, I’m happy to keep chatting. COVID has been talked about and its impact on this industry, all around the world. And what we saw, I suppose, with COVID was that immediate increase in funeral streaming. A lot of places that weren’t providing it all of a sudden had to. Now Funeral Directors more and more where there wasn’t streaming, you know I’d see Funeral Directors with iPads in the air and sort of all of those kinds of things. Some have been really quick, though, to also criticise the rise of technology. You know, digital memorials and some of those sorts of things, I guess. Again, I’m interested, and this is just a general kind of to the panel, so you can find out over who responds to this first.

But I guess the good and bad of technology, any observations there?

Michael Robertson
Look, for myself, the good has certainly been it really pushed the industry into doing things like your live streaming and finding new ways to do it. So, you do now have more of those families from overseas or interstate feeling part of a service, whereas previously sometimes they wouldn’t have been able to do that or they had to do the flyover. The bad in that aspect is exactly the same of that side of things as well. It’s a rainy day here in a bit of a rainy overcast day, potentially there could be people in that community that do want to be part of it but go oh it’s a bit wet, I’ll do it on livestream instead. So, I think the ease of that is also there’s a positive to it, there’s greater access to being part of a service online, but there’s also that negative as well in regards to it can be easier to sit at home and watch the service and then see the family later on. Sometimes it’s a catch 22 for me.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah, it is and I guess it comes back to some of the outsourcing stuff that we were talking about. Sometimes we’re looking for what might be easy. The rest of the panel, any thoughts about any of that?

Helen Callanan
Yeah, I’d love to offer a couple of things. I think one of the, I’ll follow if you like, Michael, some lead of the negatives and the positives. And for me personally, I’ve seen a lot of positives come out of it and like if we’re looking at COVID and I’m from Victoria, so we win for the most locked up place in the world. So, we’ve got a fair bit of experience with this and where numbers were so radically limited for so long, so number one on the positive, digitalisation meant that we could still be community. We still had that inclusion which is so important for people they couldn’t physically bear. But there was another thing that came out of these tiny funeral or tiny gatherings of the ten people that were allowed to be there is it actually created a lot of opportunities for those people to have a time together, acknowledging the death of their person in a way that isn’t possible when you’ve got the big public event. And this is what we see with doula-ing, that if we’re able to take care of our person at home and that’s if a family chooses to right, not like it’s the right thing to do.

If a family chooses to take care of their person at home or in some environment where they’re providing the after-death care, they’ve got time to express their private grief privately in the bosom of their family in their own intimate community. Then when they go to the public event, which is the funeral or the celebration of life or the memorial, whatever it’s going to be, they have to put they’re often like the hosts of this big event, everyone coming to them. If a person has not had the time to do their private grieving, that’s tough. And that, I say, from what I see, can leave deep trauma around the grief. It’s like it adds to the grieving that we’re not real good at doing. You know. So, I would say that so on the positive inclusion community and also then these smaller opportunities, more intimate. But then on the other hand, it has the other side of it as well.

Adrienne Ryan
COVID just accelerated so many things and the introduction of streaming was a huge save for a lot of people. And it also meant that people not just down the road that couldn’t go because only ten people could come along, it gave access to people overseas. It was amazing, really, the way that it’s now just made that normal. And you can stream and see it live, but then if the time frame doesn’t work, you can also watch the recording. And also for people who are there, sometimes there’s so much happening that to actually see a recording a bit like a wedding, you get to go, oh great, I get to be there.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Digest it a little bit more

Adrienne Ryan
And I feel like the other thing, though, that I totally agree with Helen, is that when it was limited to ten people at first, we were so gosh, you felt so sad for those families. But those ten people, it was amazing to be at a funeral that only had ten people and to feel the way that that felt. And we have always had the offering for families to have what we call a viewing or a quiet time. And we often encourage that to happen on a day before the funeral. And it can be for them, it can be for as many people or as few people as they wish. And often it turns out to be just for the immediate family and close friends, the main pocket of a person’s life. And we just find that the way that you can do it, one is very personal and private and the other is very public. And both of them are extremely valuable because the public one, people get to see people that they didn’t know how a connection to their loved one in life, like the person that sold in newspapers for 30 years. It’s amazing the stories you hear that come out of having had a funeral, which is the stories that we are not getting to hear.

If people don’t appreciate the value because particularly as the words what was it? We’re living longer, we’re dying longer, taking longer to die, but we’re older. When we die, there’s still a lot more people around perhaps than what they were before. But I feel like COVID has accelerated the opportunity that we have to perhaps access from all over the world. And that’s a fantastic thing. But COVID has also made us go, I can’t have a funeral. Okay, I won’t. I’ll just have a direct cremation and we’ll do something later but the later may not come. And the thing is that I don’t think we’ll know until much later down the track what that actually has meant for us in our own personal relationship with grief and grieving community acknowledgement, because I feel like it’s an unknown at this stage. But there’s definitely a gap that COVID has left or accelerated because of the lack of funerals that have happened.

Lea-Ann McNeill
I’ve had a question come through actually, and maybe Michael and Adrienne, I might kind of pitch this question at you. It talks actually specifically about memorialisation. And I guess traditionally people might have had urns from a Funeral Directors. Within a cemetery we have the traditional niche walls or the memorialisation gardens. The question here is, are we seeing, or do you have any comment around traditional cemetery memorialisation? Are you seeing more things at beaches, parks, gardens, those kinds of things? And I guess I would also quickly respond to that conversation too and say, are our governments responding to that need too? Because I know people can get a little bit anxious about some of the roadside tributes that get constructed for families. We don’t want to leave them up too long. So again, are you seeing changes in the way that people memorialise?

Michael Robertson
Yes, they are. There’s a smaller percentage now that will memorialise in what you would call a traditional cemetery or memorial park. Certainly, there’s a lot of people who want to then place their ashes in their local, down the beach or up in the Flinders Ranges where that loved one sort of loved going camping or was a surfer so they would spread the ashes down at the beach or something like that. So there is certainly a lot more of that happening as well. And a lot of the local councils in, say, South Australia will embrace that and allow for that as well and I know certainly one of them has a big uptake of people memorialising down at down at Glenelg there. It’s a really popular beach area there’s that sense of memories and sense of that was where they would always go. So we are adapting in that aspect. We need to probably do a little bit more in that, though as well, rather than just having that, what else is there? Can they then, yes, we need to do a little bit more in regard to that aspect and open up the ideas or I’ve seen before again, there’s always affiliations with the water and the sea and so forth. Seeing overseas, some people have made artificial reefs with placing the ashes over time. So, giving more options and thinking a little bit more outside of the square is something that we really need to do a lot more.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah. Elham, I might jump to you, if you don’t mind. I guess from a family’s perspective, from what you’re seeing, well, I guess your observations through COVID as well, but also, I guess your families that you deal with again, you’re similar to the Doula situation where you’re often walking the journey with a family, both prior to death and then post death. Are you finding families are thinking differently about memorialisation? And again, through COVID, did you see changes in the way people behaved and responded?

Elham Day
Yeah, there’s a lot there. I will try and speak to. Look, I think that COVID internationally revealed the kind of fragility and instability of health systems, economies like big systems like that. So, technology piece is invaluable to us. Telehealth, we’re the only service in the state. We do care for families right across the state. I was thinking, like, yesterday, part of my role is bereavement counselling. So yesterday I was transported to Far North Queensland, then to central Queensland, and then to the Gold Coast, as I was doing bereavement counselling with families. So, the equity of access that is offered where families can’t just because we’re not just the hospice building in Brisbane, we’re a state-wide service, so there’s beautiful things in that. But something is also lost because you can’t replicate things like ritual. Whether that ritual is a memorial, like a funeral or a memorial after a cremation, something is really lost. And families might not always have the words for it, but actually, as much as telehealth can be really valuable to get, like a really quick turnaround response from a clinician, we really need you to see these symptoms. The video makes all the difference in those times, this is irreplaceable, but when we come over to thinking around that, especially grief and bereavement and memorialisation, people often do things like this or use their hands. Trying to describe that fancy counselling term might be inter-subjectivity. Right. It was just a fancy way of saying, something happens when we are in each other’s presence and I witness you in your broken heartedness and your pain, and I somehow in myself make space to show that I see that, and I care about that. And I don’t use something like words, whereas if we stop using words and looked at each other online for too long, it gets a little awkward. Like on the radio, if it gets too quiet for too long, you’re like, is this still working? It’s a light-hearted way of saying there’s something quite intangible but very very precious that is unique to coming together in person. So, what we see, whether families are connected to traditional religious or faith based structures or not, is that they are keen to try and find that meaning. Ultimately, it’s supporting people to find ways. Mary Oliver has this great poem that finishes three things you have to do in life to be able to survive.

Hold what you love, what you love, hold it against your bones like your life depends on it. And then when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. And so really, in supporting people to relearn how to let go and caring ways, I don’t think there’s anything that comes close to people being able to be together in person, as I say, whether they’re calling it a ritual or not.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah, and look, that actually is just a wonderful sentiment, I think, to end our webinar on. You couldn’t have timed that any better if you had tried, Elham, to be totally honest, I think we could have easily talked to you for probably another hour. I’ve got so much on my list of things I wanted to talk about that we just didn’t really get to so unless there is no other kind of burning questions. I’ve got terrible puns today and which we haven’t come through. What I did want to do is thank you all so very much for participating today. I really could have spoken much longer about this topic with you all. I think the big thing to come out of this, I mean, when we talk about dying to know day, the audience is usually the community, whereas probably our audience today are those that are going to be working with the community. And so I think the important thing that comes out of this for me and some of the notes that I’ve made while we were all been talking is that within our industry it is important that we are constantly sharing with the community that notion of choice. That notion of community. That cemeteries aren’t the stigmatised places. That death is a very natural part of life and that it doesn’t matter how you choose to do it. It’s something that needs to be talked about. It is something that maybe needs to be planned. I was going to ask Elham, you mentioned the book, you mentioned the Lancet report. What was the title of that report again? Just anybody who might be interested.

Elham Day
I’ll just post a link in the chat if you like.

Lancet Report: The Value of Death

The Lancet Public Health: Access to palliative care: the primacy of public health partnerships and community participation.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Yeah, that’d be wonderful.

Elham Day
Yeah sure. I’ll do that now.

Lea-Ann McNeill
And I have a quick anonymous question just came through and said, what happens if your doula dies?

Helen Callanan
What a great question. No one is a silo. And what we say is it’s about doula, it’s not about Helen. So, part of our agreement and our arrangement with people is should I not be able to be available, I might get sick or I might have some emergency that I would have a senior doula there with you. So that it’s about doula, it’s not about Helen.

Lea-Ann McNeill
And there’s, I think, our final tip from our webinar. Once again, thank you everybody, for your participation. I really appreciate it. And that goes to all of our participants as well. Following your message from the webinar. No one is a silo. Thank you very much, everybody.

Helen Callanan
Thank you.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Enjoy your day.

Helen Callanan
Thank you, everybody.

Michael Robertson
Thank you.

Lea-Ann McNeill
Thank you. Bye.