Campaigning

Standing up for bereaved families

As a charity, it is a core part of WAY Widowed and Young’s mission to stand up for the rights of young widowed people across the UK. 

Following the July 2024 General Election, WAY wrote to the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall asking for her urgent support for bereaved families, whose needs have been overlooked for too many years. 

We are calling for the new Government to restore the long-term support for bereaved families that was removed in 2017 by:

• extending the duration of Bereavement Support Payments for longer than 18 months
• and uprating these payments in line with inflation (these payments have not been increased since they were first introduced 2017).

We are also calling for:

• Bereavement Support Payments to be extended to cohabiting couples without children, following last year’s extension of support to cohabiting couples with children. Read more
• Reconsidering the National Insurance eligibility criteria for Bereavement Support Payments that has led to some WAY members not being able to claim support. Read more
• We are also calling for MPs to support WAY Widowed and Young’s Blank Space campaign, which is calling for birth certificate equality for non-married parents. Read more

Please join our campaign! Write to your MP today and ask for their support in standing up for bereaved families!

In February 2023, the Government extended bereavement support to cohabiting parents in response to two legal challenges and a decade-long campaign by bereavement charities including WAY Widowed and Young and the Childhood Bereavement Network.

Going forward, bereaved parents will be able to claim Bereavement Support Payment in the same way as their peers who are married or in a civil partnership and hundreds of families also received retrospective payments.