Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and his deputy Dumbarton MSP Dame Jackie Baillie pictured publicising the work of the Marie Curie organisation.
By Bill Heaney
There are no pockets in a shroud … you can’t take your money with you when you die … these are two commonly heard sayings in West Dunbartonshire …
It seems however that many of us won’t have to worry about money when we die. We won’t have any money to worry about.
A new report from the Marie Curie organisation, Dying in Poverty in Scotland 2024, is taken from research carried out by Marie Curie and Loughborough University.
And it has uncovered the fact that one in four working age people and one in six pension age people in Scotland face poverty at the end of life, and that terminal illness makes worse existing inequality.
The report’s authors have found that symptoms of terminal illness can result in higher energy costs, costs for housing adaptations and force people to leave the labour market and rely on social security support.
And that these challenges are not confined to the dying person, but affect family and unpaid carers who, it believes, are too often left to carry out the bulk of caring duties due to what it sees as inadequate support.
It has concluded that more must be done to target support to those who are facing dying, death and bereavement, and further notes the calls for governments to work with Marie Curie to prevent people in Scotland, including those in Glasgow and West Dunbartonshire, from dying in poverty.
Labour MSP Paul Sweeney, pictured left, referred to the report in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday as “a crucial new piece of research by Marie Curie”.
He said the report on the extent of end-of-life poverty in Scotland, “lays bare the prevalence of deaths in poverty in Scotland, with 10,400 people dying in poverty, which equates to one in four working-age people and one in six pensioners, with working-age people with dependent children being most at risk of end-of-life poverty.”
He added: “The Parliament often discusses the plight of health inequalities—and rightly so—but progress in reducing the disparity in outcomes across health and social care is stagnant and, sadly, the report further highlights that reality on multiple fronts.
“Indeed, it states that ‘more working-age people of a minoritised ethnicity die in poverty in their last year of life, including 47 per cent of Black people’.”
Mr Sweeney said this compared to 25 per cent of white people, and that women are overall more likely to die in poverty than men.
In recent weeks, he added, debate around assisted dying has often referenced the notion of dignity in dying — “However, looking at the report and considering the stark figures that I have just mentioned, I think that we can all agree that a dignified death is not a guarantee for many people approaching the end of their lives.
“Members might be familiar with an earlier work by Marie Curie and the University of Glasgow—the dying in the margins exhibition, which was shown in the Parliament building last year and documented the impact of poverty on the end-of-life experience of people with a terminal illness.
“The research in that exhibition captured the reality of the home environment and the barriers that participants experienced as they approached the end of their lives in poverty.
“One example that has stayed with me is that of a patient who lived in a housing association home that no longer met their accessibility needs as they got more poorly and infirm. As the tenant was approaching the end of his life, the housing association was not willing to make the necessary investment in adjustments to make the home more suitable and comfortable.
“That meant that the gentleman could not die as he wanted—in his own home, in a familiar setting—but ended his life in hospital. Any of us with a loved one in that situation would be deeply distressed by such a situation.
“It is not good enough. It is important that people at the end of their lives have agency, choice and control, but research for the dying in the margins exhibition in 2023 and the ‘Dying in Poverty in Scotland 2024’ report found that that is not the reality for too many people in Scotland—they do not have that agency, choice and control.
“The report recommends that the Scottish Government consider specific support for terminally ill people with dependent children under 16, as well as support for all terminally ill people with energy costs.”
Mr Sweeney asked the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health , Jenni Minto, what assessment the Government has made of the report and what steps it will take to realise those recommendations. The Consumer Scotland report that was published last week also recommended targeted financial support for those who are terminally ill.
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Further instalments of this special report of this impostant debate in the Scottish Parliament will appear in the coming days in The Dumbarton Democrat.