The report, Responses to Death, Care and Family Relations in Urban Senegal, conducted by academics from the University of Reading and The Open University provides the first in-depth understanding of responses to death, care and family relations in an urban West African context.
Funded by The Leverhulme Trust, the researchers suggest that Britain could actually learn much from the example of less affluent countries in Africa, such as Senegal.
The research drew on people’s experiences of a family death, and analysed levels of financial, emotional and practical support offered to bereaved families in Senegal. The researchers found that the material impact on family lives, that might already be precarious, meant the emotional and practical consequences were often bound together.
The researchers concluded that while Senegal’s average incomes are a fraction of those in the UK and it has a very limited welfare support system, more extensive networks of social and family ties allow some bereaved families to access informal help more easily. The death of a relative, however, could have a major impact on poorer families who often had fewer social ties to draw on.
In comparison, in affluent countries like the UK, grief is considered an emotional journey, but this perception may neglect the financial and material consequences of a family death. As a result, the UK risks sidelining aspects of bereavement that may directly affect children’s life chances, and may have a significant emotional impact, the researchers say.
Dr Jane McCarthy, Co-investigator for the project and Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University comments:
“Studying how death is understood and how people cope in circumstances that are generally very different from those of the UK, throws into sharp relief important aspects of the way we respond to deaths in Britain that we might otherwise overlook. Financial and material issues, social relationships, and religious ideas all feature strongly in the Senegal research, and yet in the UK we focus very much instead on individual emotional responses and needs. The emotional impact of a death is clearly often very significant, but it needs to be considered in the broader contexts of people’s lives.”
At a time when bereavement benefits are under review in the UK, the authors say that like Senegal, the emphasis should be on strengthening networks of support so that they are available when people need them most.
Photo by Craig Strachan 
