We all know grief is a process and a complicated one at that, with every person handling their grief differently. As funeral directors, one of your best assets is your ability to gauge not just where someone is in the process of grief but also knowing how to respond to them. From helping them prepare for funerals preneed insurance to providing care after a funeral through after care programs, funeral directors fill a variety of roles, all designed to bring families comfort and peace after the passing of a loved one.
Yet, there’s a practical side to all of this. The funeral industry is still a business and while providing a remarkably valuable human service at a time of immense need for your clients and community is a primary goal, building and improving your business is often a close second. Thankfully, there’s a great way to do both and that’s through building a robust and thorough aftercare program that provides ongoing grief support.
Quick Links
- What Families Need After a Funeral
- Why Providing Care After a Funeral is Important
- Providing Care After a Funeral- Aftercare Programs for Funeral Homes
What Families Need After a Funeral
You’ve likely seen it before, but it’s not something most people understand until it happens to them. When we lose a loved one, there is often a lot of support immediately after and leading up to the funeral. Then, once everyone has had the chance to say goodbye, support dwindles until it’s gone.
Once the final meal-train meal has been delivered, friends and extended family often go back to their daily lives. Sadly, that’s typically when families need the most grief support. Instead, along with the meals stopping, so do the phone calls. So what is it that families need most after a funeral?
- Simple check ins- phone calls, cards, or texts
- Practical support in terms of errands or handyman duties
- Gift cards or boxes/baskets
- Food and/or meals
- Presence- even if in silence, presence can be invaluable
- Escapes, even if short, from the grief process (and out of the home)
- Someone who will listen and empathize
- Attention to significant dates and milestones (e.g. deceased’s birthday)
- Sharing memories
- Seeing the person beyond the grief, remembering who they were before their loss
While many of these aren’t necessarily something a funeral home can assist with, others are. Looking for and acting upon ways you as a funeral director or your funeral home can assist with care after a funeral for grieving families improves your service level and helps differentiate you from other funeral homes.
Why Providing Care After a Funeral is Important
While the quality of your aftercare programs and grief support will help differentiate you from other funeral homes,they’re doing more than differentiation. In fact, as mentioned above, one of the primary reasons it’s important is that many other people in your client’s life will have moved on and returned to their daily schedule. It’s normal for many folks to want to move on or avoid continuing to dwell in grief as it forces people to confront a lot of emotions about their mortality as well as that of their loved ones.
Funeral homes and funeral directors are uniquely prepared to provide guidance and support while clients are still grieving. Significant experience with grieving individuals prepares you to provide support and advice for processing and moving through grief.
Through the grief support you provide, you also continue to build and nurture strong relationships that can turn into referrals and business growth. Additionally, your continued grief support and care after the funeral demonstrate a commitment for building relationships and true care for your clients. Those relationships help keep you connected to the family who will see the services you provide as far more than transactional. That kind of relationship creates loyalty.
While the primary goal of an aftercare program is to simply provide the grief support families need, if built and implemented properly, it can also be a conduit for growth.
Providing Care After a Funeral- Aftercare Programs for Funeral Homes
Not everyone grieves the same. You’ve likely seen a wide variety of reactions and methods of processing grief, so the best aftercare programs are ones that include a variety of mechanisms for support. One size doesn't fit all and the strongest programs that build relationships honor that reality.
1. Provide a variety of resources
From printed collateral to online guides, providing a library of resources for your clients is essential. This should include an in-house lending library with books on everything from the grieving process to memorializations. When your clients use the library, you have the opportunity to check in, make recommendations, and see how they’re doing.
In addition to a lending library, consider an online resources library of both downloadable ebooks or articles, as well as links to valuable sites and resources. You may also wish to create a proprietary guide that provides insights you’ve gleaned over the years from your experiences as well as advice from grief support experts you trust.
2. Offer support groups
Much like your guides and other resources, offering groups or workshops for your clients are a great way to provide support. Further, these can be tailored to meet different needs depending where clients are in the grieving process. And, they also provide an opportunity for you to open these groups to individuals who are not currently clients which can help expand your business.
This also helps establish you as a valuable resource within your community when it comes to funeral services and grief support.
3. Provide and maintain online memorial sites
Many online memorial sites are outsourced and standardized. These days, personalization is paramount. More and more consumers are not just expecting, but demanding ways they can tailor services to reflect themselves and, understandably, this is important when it comes to online memorials as well.
Families are seeking ways to connect with loved ones or friends who may be too far away to attend a funeral. Those individuals are looking for ways to share memories as well as condolences and cookie cutter sterile sites just don’t cut it. Offering simple ways to personalize online memorials makes a huge difference to families and visitors.
4. Empower the grieving and engage with them
One popular grief coping mechanism is simply keeping busy. One great way to not only help the grieving find activities and connect with others is to engage them with the community. These can also be volunteer opportunities that assist others who are grieving, delivering donated flowers to nearby cemeteries or nursing homes, and more. The added advantage here is that these also provide community touchpoints for your funeral home.
5. Work with partners who support your programs
The partners you choose for your funeral home, from ancillary services to preneed insurance providers can and should be offering support for the programs you offer. It’s worth asking the businesses you work with or service providers what options they have to help support your aftercare program or other services you provide. For example, ELCO Mutual Insurance has a Preneed Partner Program that includes access to Domanicare and its aftercare services like text messaging.
Providing aftercare isn’t an additional service or program, it’s part of your ongoing services and the care you take for your clients. It should also be an invaluable part of your marketing and growth strategy. You're as much in the business of building relationships as you are offering services and a strong aftercare program demonstrates that.
If you’re looking for ways to build a robust aftercare program, then working with strong partners who pride themselves on delivering the same level of service you offer to your clients, then get in touch with the ELCO team today. We’re there when you need us because you’re there when your clients need you.
