Death in a Care Home

Many care homes keep notes on file about the wishes of residents and their families for when they die.

This may include details such as which family member should be contacted, and whether or not they should be informed immediately if the death occurs during the night.

The care home should also record which funeral director you would like them to contact at the appropriate time.

If the death occurs in a care home, the staff may need to contact the person’s GP practice or an out of hours service on your behalf to confirm the death.

If a Registered Nurse or Paramedic is already in attendance, and the deceased was on an End of Life Pathway, it may not be necessary for another medical professional to attend.

If it is clear that the death was expected, the attending medical professional will give verbal permission for the deceased to be transferred into the care of the Funeral Director.

If there are any concerns about the cause of the death, such as whether it was sudden or unexpected, they may refer the death to the Coroner. This may involve the deceased being transferred from the care home into the care of the Coroner.

The care home staff will contact your chosen Funeral Director on your behalf to arrange for the deceased to be transferred into their care.

At Gillotts, when we receive a call from a care home, we always check whether there are any family members who wish to visit the care home to say goodbye before we arrive. If this is the case we can delay our arrival until this has taken place.

We will ask the care home staff for the contact details of the most appropriate person for us to contact in the coming days.

We recommend that you contact the deceased’s GP surgery within the next couple of days to ensure that they have been informed of the death.

You should also check that they have the contact details of the most appropriate person to receive calls over the coming days. Bear in mind that if your loved one has only been in the care home for a short time, the care home may have recently transferred them from their usual surgery to one used for that care homes’ residents.

Medical Examiners, are independent senior Doctors whose role is to scrutinise paperwork following a death. Part of their role is to discuss the proposed cause of death and the circumstances with you, to enable you to ask any questions or raise any concerns you may have.

Within a few days, the Medical Examiner’s office will contact you by phone to explain what the cause of death will be recorded as, or whether the death needs to be referred to the Coroner.

If they are not referring the death to the Coroner, they will usually advise you that they are sending the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death to the Registrars, along with your contact details.

The Registrar’s service will contact you by phone, text or email depending on local practice to invite you to make an appointment to register the death.

Once they have received the paperwork, the death usually needs to be registered within 5 days.

If you do not live locally you can attend your local registrars to Register by Declaration, but you will not be able to obtain the certificates straight away – these will still be issued by the registrar in the place where the death occurred.

Find out more about registering the death here.

We will use the contact details we have been given by the care home to make an initial call on the working day after we have transferred the deceased into our care.

However if you would prefer to talk to us sooner than this you can call us at any time.

During this call we will offer to talk through the next steps, answer any questions you may have, and, if you feel you are ready, make an appointment to meet to begin discussing the funeral arrangements.

There’s no pressure, so if you don’t feel ready to make an appointment straight away. We can contact you a few days later or wait to hear from you when you’re ready.

As soon as you are ready, we can arrange to meet with you to talk about your thoughts and wishes for the funeral. We can start these conversations even if the paperwork to register the death has not been completed.

Once the Medical Examiner has confirmed that they are sending the paperwork to the registrar, we can confidently look at dates for the funeral.

If you have already met with us to begin discussing your wishes for the funeral please let us know that the Medical Examiner has completed their paperwork and we can look at date options for the funeral.

If you have not yet felt ready to meet with us to begin planning the funeral, but wish to do so, please get in touch and we will make an appointment to meet with you.