Bob Parker

I am a doula in training.I worked for 36 years in Social Services in a large English county. On my social work qualifying course in the late 1970s I focused on dying and bereavement issues. Later I moved into senior management and specialised in child protection and children’s safeguarding.Since moving to Edinburgh in 2022 I have volunteered with the local hospice as a ‘Compassionate Neighbour’; and am now running a series of death cafes.I believe that the subject of dying needs to become part of life and community thinking.My views on dying were greatly influenced by my mother’s death in 2014.I do not have a religious belief in life after death but fervently believe that everyone has a right to their own views and beliefs and should be supported and encouraged to express them and to experience their own death as they wish.