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You and Yours: Human Rights in Care, Direct Cremations, Green Festivals

17/03/2021

Human Rights in Care, Direct Cremations, Green Festivals

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Human Rights in Care, Direct Cremations, Green Festivals

Human rights in social care. Rise in direct cremations. Making music festivals greener.

Warning on respecting human rights of those in care. The big rise in people opting for direct cremations. Why the band Massive Attack wants to make music festivals greener.

Councils have to respect people's human rights when they're arranging care for them - that's the law. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has issued a report about this after Nottinghamshire County Council failed to give a man with dementia the care and support that he was legally entitled to have. The man who was meant to be spending two weeks respite in a care home ended up stuck there for five months without any proper assessment, wracking up a debt of £15,000. His family were then chased by the care home and baliffs for the fees. We hear from the man's daughter and we also speak to Evan Lerwill from the Ombudsman. Nottinghamshire County Council told us in a statement they've wholeheartedly embraced the Ombudsman's recommendations for improvements.

We look at the rise in direct cremations and whether the way we're saying goodbye to loved ones is changing. Direct cremations - where bodies going straight to the hospital to the crematorium without any mourners - rose from three percent of all funerals in 2019 to 14 percent in 2020. The average cost for a funeral last year with a cremation cost nearly £4,000. A direct cremation costs half of that. We hear from a woman who chose a direct cremation for her dad. We also speak to Catherine Powell from Pure Cremations, whose company now carries out 30 direct cremations a day, and Dr Kate Woodthorpe from Bath University, who studies the social aspects of death dying and bereavement. 

We hear why the band, Massive Attack, is leading the way in trying to make music festivals more environmentally friendly. Yesterday, the band told a select committee of MPs what they're doing to cut carbon emissions. Melanie Abbott reports.


Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Tara Holmes

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