This project grew from a partnership between All Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care (AIIHPC), LGBT Ireland and Irish Hospice Foundation, who started carrying out “Death Cafés” around Ireland in 2022 and saw the need to develop an end-of-life guide for the LGBTQIA+ community.
What are Death Cafes? Simply a comfortable and safe space where people can have conversations about death, dying and bereavement with tea and cake; have conversations that are sometimes too difficult to have with our own family and friends.
We had all sorts of expectations. From nobody showing up. To too many showing up. Having awkward silences and needing to fill up time. People feeling scared or nervous. That attendees would primarily be older men. To ensure conversations flowed we planned a structured facilitation and had a list of resources to pull from. However, none of our plans were needed. And none of our expectations were met.
Conversations flowed. And overflowed. We had planned for two-hour conversations and had to end when we were running over three hours. People were excited, there was age diversity and gender diversity.
Needless to say, people had a lot to share and when they left, they asked for more spaces like these.
So, we kept providing them. And from each Death Café, we learned new things and noted gaps and common challenges that the community was experiencing. Such as:
-the lack of a specific LGBTQIA+ bereavement support line
-need for intergenerational networks
– “Pearly Gate-keeping” for funeral planning outside of religious rituals and regarding end-of-life conversations
-Need for more resources in this area for the community and for health and social care professionals.
The latter sparked the idea for creating an LGBTQIA+ End-of- Life Reference Group that could develop such resources. And thanks to funding from the LGBTI+ Community Services Fund 2023 from The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, we were able to continue hosting Death Cafes during 2023 and set up the reference group that created this resource.
