Harvey community encouraged to be more open about death

A Harvey institution welcomed the community for an open conversation about planning for the end of life on Friday.

Harvey’s Community Resource Centre held its end-of-life-planning morning tea, inviting locals to sit down and discuss their plans for death.

The event had Groven Legal solicitor Stephen Venter discuss the importance of having a strong will and testament and shoring up the power of attorney and guardianship.

A Palliative Care Australia grant funded the event, aiming to educating people to prepare for the end.

CRC manager Tracy-Anne Davis said they were able to expand the project’s scope to include wills thanks to the support of Mr Venter.

“We’re encouraging conversation about end-of-life planning,” Ms Davis said.

“This morning has been an introduction to people who are interested in having their wills drawn up, but don’t want to play $600.”

Ms Davis said it was important to start death dialogue within the community, and bringing the service to the community has allowed the project to be majorly successful so far.

“Lots of people in this generation don’t even talk about it,” she said.

“My parents were so unprepared, I’ve just gone though the process with them and they hadn’t even spoken to each other about it before starting.”

Mr Venter said over his career he had seen many cases where families were unprepared to handle a death, often resulting in disarray and fights among grieving relatives.

“We see so many people dying without wills and their families don’t know what’s going on resulting in huge family fights and it’s absolutely unnecessary if everything is in place,” he said.

Mr Venter said he works with the Cancer Council each year during its wills week in Bunbury. He said according to Cancer Council research, only 62 per cent of people have some form of will in place.

Ms Davis said the CRC would be welcoming Mr Venter back to the centre twice a year from now on, with the CRC hosting its first end-of-life-planning expo called The Last Goodbye on March 28 next year.