WAY calls on the new Government to stand up for bereaved families

July 2024

The charity WAY Widowed and Young has written 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 in recent years. 

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

• extending the duration of Bereavement Support Payments 

• and uprating these payments in line with inflation.

Until 2017, if a parent died, Widowed Parent’s Allowance was paid to their surviving spouse or civil partner to help them bring up the couple’s children until they left full-time education or until the surviving parent reached State Pension age. The median claim, according to the Childhood Bereavement Network, was between five and six years. In the most extreme cases, families were supported for up to 19 or 20 years. 

In April 2017, that support was slashed to just 18 months for newly bereaved families. Old-style Widowed Parent’s Allowance was replaced with the new-style Bereavement Support Payment, as highlighted in the Liberal Democrat’s Manifesto during the General Election. This change left 91% of families with grieving children supported for a shorter time than they would have been under the old system and 75% financially worse off. 

18 months is not long enough

We believe 18 months is simply too short a time. Stopping payments after such a narrow window has a significant impact on grieving families’ finances. Financial instability is very common among bereaved families, sometimes resulting in the loss of the family home – a recent study among WAY members showed that the cost of living crisis has left 65 per cent of members feeling concerned for their finances.  Many widowed people struggle to pay household bills, cope with childcare costs and put food on the table.

The financial impact is particularly stark for WAY members with children of all ages, who make up 70 per cent of the charity’s membership. Overnight, a household income can be reduced by more than 50 per cent (and sometimes considerably more if the person who died was the main breadwinner). 

WAY Widowed and Young and our members are asking for the Government to restore long-term support to bereaved families. This would help to give families the security they need to rebuild their lives.

Extending these payments would really help to give families the security they need to rebuild their lives after loss. We are also calling on Bereavement Support Payments to be uprated in line with inflation – these payments have not been increased since they were first introduced in April 2017, leading to a significant decrease in over the past seven years as the cost of living crisis has seen prices skyrocketing. Goods and services costing £350 in 2017 would cost more than £450 today, according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator.

WAY has also written to the Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Ed Davey for his support following his personal manifesto pledge to double the amount of money available for bereaved families.

Other issues we are calling for include:

• 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

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STAND UP FOR BEREAVED FAMILIES: Please join our campaign! Write to your MP today and ask for their support in standing up for bereaved families of all shapes and sizes!

We have prepared a template letter for you to download and tailor for your own circumstances.*