Does upholding of dignity supports recovery from adversity, including the immense adversities around Covid -19?

Allan Wade, Ph.D. lives on Vancouver Island, Canada, where he works as a family therapist, researcher, and consultant with a primary interest in addressing violence.  Dr. Wade works with individuals, couples, families, children, adults, communities and organizations where violence is at issue.  A leading authority on interpersonal violence, Dr. Wade provides training and supervision to forensic and human services professionals and conducts original research on institutional responses (e.g., courts, family law, media, criminal codes, child protection) to diverse forms of interpersonal violence.  Dr. Wade has written numerous articles and book chapters and recently co-edited the book, “Response-Based Approaches to Interpersonal Violence” (2016), published by Palgrave MacMillan.

Janine Shepherd, CSP, was a former Australian champion skier headed to the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. Instead, she was the victim of a horrific accident on a training bike ride, suffering multiple, life-threatening injuries. 

After almost six months in hospital and struggling to rehabilitate with permanent disabilities, Janine didn’t just learn to walk, she chose to fly!

Starting flight training in a plaster body cast, she ultimately attained her commercial pilot rating, and even taught aerobatics. Told is was unlikely she would ever have children; she is the proud mother of three.

Today, Janine Shepherd is an internationally-renowned speaker and author of six best-selling books. Her inspiring TED talk, “A Broken Body Isn’t a Broken Person.” has garnered over 1.6 million views.

She’s been featured on Australian “60 Minutes”, “This is Your Life”, and recognised with her country’s highest honour, The Order of Australia. She was named an ‘Architect of Change’ by Maria Shriver and was once named as one of the ‘Ten Outstanding Young People of the World.” Janine is an ambassador for Red Bull, Wings for Life and also Spinal Cure Australia.

After the tragic loss of her son, Christopher, to a fatal scaffolding accident on a construction site in April 2019, Patrizia Cassaniti  founded the ‘Touched by Christopher Foundation’ and Let’s Talk about Safety advocacy campaign.

Patrizia is on a mission to make workplaces accountable for safety and to reign in a law that will ensure employers are securing the safety of their workers and have the ability to speak up with confidence, without being victimised.

Since Christopher’s death #christopherslaw has been making the rounds on the media highlighting the importance of workplace safety. Patrizia shares her story about the reality of what happens when safety is not adhered to and tragedy hits.

Today, The Touched by Christopher Foundation helps families financially within the week of a workplace incident, to allow the grieving process to not be interrupted by the daunting thoughts of needing to pay bills.

#ChristophersLaw #TouchedByChristopher

Dr Kerrie Noonan is a clinical psychologist and social researcher. She is currently the clinical manager at the National Association for Loss and Grief (NALAG) NSW in Dubbo.

Over the past 25 years Kerrie has been working to create a more death literate society, one where people and communities have the practical know-how needed to plan well and respond to dying death and grief. This includes how we respond to grief and trauma in our communities, and now the global losses associated with the Covid19 pandemic. Kerrie has a long-standing interest in community capacity building approaches to death, dying and bereavement, palliative care and how people can build their death literacy. She was the founding executive director of The GroundSwell Project and national initiatives Dying to Know Day, FilmLife Project and ComComHub. She is active in the Compassionate Communities movement internationally.

Kerrie is a member of the Caring at End of Life Research team at Western Sydney University, and is an Investigator on the Death Literacy Index project. This pioneering research has investigated the role of family, friends and neighbours play when someone is dying at home and coined the term ‘death literacy’ and the now development of the Death Literacy Index.

Kerrie was awarded her PhD in 2018 by Western Sydney University for her study titled Renegade Stories: A study of deathworkers using social approaches to dying, death and loss in Australia. Kerrie has a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology, a BA (Psychology), and a Grad. Dip. in Systemic Therapy (Family Therapy) and a fellow of the Sydney School for Social Entrepreneurs. My clinical experience involves palliative care, health psychology, loss and grief, pain management, program development and evaluation research.

She sits on the council of Public Health Palliative Care International and was the co-Chair of the Organising Committee for the 6th PHPCI Conference in 2019.