Choose your funeral home
with confidence
At your difficult time, it's important to know that the firm you are choosing represents the highest of standards and professionalism. By the very nature of their association with ODFSA, they have shown their deep compassion towards attaining the highest standards for their families and communities. Their constant dedication to keeping themselves up to date on all of the latest legislative, consumer protection, advanced learning and caring practices is why you can choose an ODFSA Member firm with confidence.
Strength in Membership
The strength in membership comes in the form of strength in numbers. ODFSA represents a coalition of professional family owned funeral homes who believe that a solid future for funeral service is based on the collective insight and dedication from caring professionals. This unified voice helps to shape and provide the professional standards that families and communities count on in their time of need.
The Unforgettables Foundation was established in 2001 by Tim Evans, a chaplain at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital in Southern California. As he helped families dealing with the grief and crises surrounding death, he learned many could not afford a funeral and were worried their child would be forgotten. In its first year, the California Fund assisted more than 70 families with funeral expenses and was named Los Angeles Times Charity of the Year.
Dr. Van Arsdell, a long-time friend of Evans, realized that the same need existed here in Canada. He established the TUF through the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and to date, over 20 families have benefited from the fund.
The National Capital Region’s funeral homes and cemetery managers strongly believed that this project should be brought to our community. In 2008 a group of volunteers from CHEO, funeral homes around the city, a cemetery in Ottawa, the Ottawa Citizen and friends of the cause, got together to give life to this worthy project.
Aside from the grief of losing a little loved one, many families are then faced with the inability to provide a suitable funeral and burial for their child: many families will put themselves in financial peril to provide such a tribute. Death care providers, whether funeral or cemetery, have historically helped needy and deserving families with free of charge or at cost funerals, burial plots and memorials. The financial hardship is certainly eased through these gestures; however, the Ottawa Valley TUF chapter would like to extend the scope of the help that is granted to these deserving families.
After the funeral and burial, many families return to a reality for which there is little financial support. Many of the families who chose to suspend their everyday activities, including work, to spend the last precious moments with their dying child, return to a daily routine that is often financially precarious.
The Ottawa Valley TUF chapter was created to help deserving families beyond the traditional form of assistance provided by the death care providers. The reasons are evident: many of these families are not entitled to government assistance or other forms of traditional assistance. They often sacrifice their income, mortgage their homes, deplete their savings, max their credit cards and lines of credit or borrow from relatives, in an effort to spend one more day, one last moment with their dying child.
Following the death of the child, the toll on these families is heavy: they are emotionally spent and financially strained. They have exhausted their financial means to care for their child and now they must rebuild from the ground up.
The death care providers in the Ottawa Region have already committed time, resources and now funds to help the TUF be a success in our community. The short-term goal of the fund is to amass $25,000.00 to immediately help needy and deserving families. The mid-term goal is to collect sufficient funds to ensure that a fund is created and placed in trust and the interest generated is used to help 12-15 families per year.
The Ottawa Valley TUF chapter, a not-for-profit group affiliated with CHEO, would like to financially support 12-15 families a year. Those families who must put their lives on hold to care for a child, who is afflicted by a life limiting illness, will be carefully assessed by a panel, including CHEO social workers, to determine their eligibility to receive this alternative form of financial assistance. These families need their community support more than ever. We are counting on you to help us reach our goal of $ 500,000.00.