We are happy to work in partnership with you and interested in any thoughts you have about the service we provide.
We are aware that you can sometimes experience difficulty finding a celebrant. There are two major factors in this, we can experience times when we are thinly spread in certain areas and we cannot always have an available celebrant at short notice.
We undertake to monitor the level of celebrant numbers we have across the country in relation to demand and to target recruitment accordingly.
Time frame
Unless a family have pressing reasons for a very early funeral it would be very helpful if you could support a time frame of celebrant accepting a funeral and briefing the family, meeting the family the next day, writing the script and getting it to them by the end of the following day. They then need some time to absorb it and respond, funeral the following afternoon, or the following day. In other words referral and family briefing on Monday, meeting Tuesday, report sent over late Wednesday, response received Thursday morning, funeral that afternoon, or, even better, Friday.
We issue a printed list of celebrants annually, at the start of the year; this indicates celebrants’ availability status and we train new funeral celebrants, usually twice per year. When they complete their formal training they move to mentoring, working with an experienced celebrant to achieve registration, the time this involves varies, the density of the population in their home area is a major factor so up to 24 new celebrants trickle on to our register throughout the year.
We email all funeral directors who have given us an email address every time we add a new celebrant, indicating who s/he is and the area s/he is likely to be working in. if you wish to be added to the email list please contact us at ceremonies.admin@humanism-scotland.org.uk
If you are experiencing difficulty finding a celebrant the coordinators are happy to try to help. They are:
National Ceremonies Officer:
Marbeth Boyle 0141 639 2934
Area Ceremonies Officers:
West: Linda Britton 0141 775 3495 and Helen Wood 0141 950 2096
East: Marilyn Jackson 0131 229 7731
North East: Alan Richardson 01888 562237
Highlands, Islands & Moray: Penelope Hamilton 07793 025331 and Janet Donnelly 01340 831983
