Award for Ted’s funeral support- Ted Worthington received the Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to charity through Bereavement Assistance Limited. 59074

By Emma Sun
AFTER 15 years of tireless work and dedication to charity through Bereavement Assistance Limited, Ted Worthington has been rewarded with the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).
“I’m very proud,” Mr Worthington said. “It’s been a long, hard road but it’s been worth it to assist those in need.”
Mr Worthington and friend Bernard Morey had volunteered in the community for many years, but it was in 1995 when they took up the challenge of helping people who couldn’t afford a funeral for loved ones. “The option was that the deceased was taken to the coroners and left there for months and months on end until there were about five others, and they were all buried together in one hole,” Mr Worthington said.
“This had been going on for 50 years. It was hard for the families, so we decided to set up a charity for them.”
Mr Worthington, who owned two businesses at the time, sold one to pay for their cause and they started to do about 20 to 30 funerals a year, free of charge. “I would write the services and conduct the eulogies,” he said.
“I was paying out of my own pocket for those who couldn’t afford a simple, dignified service.”
They became registered as a not-for-profit service for the poor on 23 June 1997 and their annual funeral services went up to 50, which then increased by 10 to 20 every year.
“The last few years we were doing almost 300 services a year, and I can see it going up to 500 in a few years,” Mr Worthington said. “When you fund something like that it’s a lot of money. I said to the government I couldn’t pay for this any more and they came and funded a bit of it. We ran all sorts of drives, sold secondhand furniture and auctioned gifts that had been donated.”
Bereavement Assistance became recognised through the community, especially by hospitals and social workers who referred people in need to them.
“We’ve never looked back, apart from the hard work and the emotion,” Mr Worthington said.
Their success led to Mr Worthington winning the Pride of Australia Medal for Care and Compassion, and they were runners-up in the Australia Day Local Hero Award.
“This award makes those people around us equally proud, especially all of the volunteers who have assisted us throughout the years,” he said.