2021 Bereavement Conference ‘Living with and Beyond Covid-19: The Passion and Paradox of Loss and Grief’

Andy Langford, Clinical Director, Cruse Bereavement Care UK. The responses of CRUSE to the Covid Pandemic.

Andy Langford is Clinical Director for Cruse Bereavement Support, the UK’s largest bereavement support charity. Andy has worked in the voluntary sector for over 25 years, within bereavement, suicide risk management, multiple needs, prison services, mental health and substance misuse. He is a currently practicing qualified Integrative Counsellor, Clinical Supervisor, Life Coach and Cognitive Behavioural Therapist, and has an MSc in Voluntary Sector Management.

Andy Langford is also a post-graduate researcher with the Open University, focusing on telephone bereavement support.

Dr. John Wilson PhD. John has specialised in bereavement and loss for 20 years, as a counsellor, supervisor and trainer. He is author of Supporting People through Loss and Grief: An Introduction for Counsellors and Other Caring Practitioners.

He completed his PhD in 2000 after six years of case study research with bereaved clients. John is a visiting research fellow at York St John University and Director of Bereavement Services at York St John University Counselling and Mental Health Clinic.

Since early March, John has taken a close interest in adapting the outcomes of his doctoral thesis to supporting clients bereaved of a loved one from Covid-19 and those bereaved from other causes during the lockdown.

With other counsellors he runs a closed support group on social media, for those bereaved during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr. Jane M. Mullins is a Dementia Nurse Consultant, Author and Founder of Finding the Light in Dementia Training and Wellbeing Hub. She has devoted over 30 years to the study and practice of dementia care, through listening to and supporting people and their families during their diagnosis in memory clinics, caring for them in hospital and in care homes, she has helped throughout all of the stages of their condition.

Jane has uncovered certain common features that may help health and social care staff, family carers and the people they care for find better ways of coping. Her practice experience is backed up by expert knowledge gained from keeping up to date as a Researcher at the Awen Institute, Swansea University and where her PhD explored multisensory ways of communication and how to stay connected with people living with dementia.

What would you do if both parents were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s on the same day?

Jean Lee worked full time teaching elementary school while she was thrust into a caregiving role for her mom and dad when they were dually diagnosed.

Her memoir, Alzheimer’s Daughter, follows two sisters–– Jean living a mile from her parents, and her sister living 1,000 miles away––through a near-decade journey as they work together to move their parents out of their life-long home, and eventually to a locked memory care facility. At the end of this hand in hand decline, the sisters are honored to be together as their parents breathe their last breath. Sadness and loss contrast with tenderness and devotion as Jean uses the elderly couple’s WWII love letters, found during the final cleanout, as chapter beginnings.

After the publication of Alzheimer’s Daughter, Jean connected with other authors of Alzheimer’s books, to co-found AlzAuthors.com with the goal of eliminating the stigma and silence often accompanying a diagnosis. AlzAuthors enables caregivers and those living with memory impairment to find written resources – memoirs, novels, nonfiction, or blogs – which educate and enlighten. The site is now managed by five administrators, and has posted weekly essays from over 300 authors with direct links to their books.

CEO of the Good Grief Trust

Linda founded The Good Grief Trust following the death of her partner Graham in 2014, from a rare form of cancer. Linda’s personal grief led her to realise that more could be done to help the bereaved. By bringing together UK bereavement services and information in one place, the Trust’s vision is to ensure that anyone grieving under any circumstance can receive a choice of immediate support, tailored to their own personal experience, in order to help them to move forward with their lives.

Liz Rothschild, author of Full Circle Productions, Westmill Woodland Burial Ground, Humanist Celebrant

Liz Rothschild is a writer, actor, playwright and founding director of Westmill woodland burial ground in Wiltshire. She has been a funeral celebrant for more than 25 years and has run numerous death cafes and a course on preparing for end of life. In 2012 she launched, and continues to curate, the Kicking the Bucket festival in Oxford. She also wrote and performs a one-woman show, Outside the Box – a life show about death, which premiered in 2016 and has toured the UK and US. These stories come from her audiences, people she has worked with and her own life.

Lynne is Professor of Counselling and Mental Health at York St John University, York, UK. She is a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) Accredited and Registered Counsellor and Psychotherapist, and an honorary fellow of the association. She is a trained supervisor of practitioners working within the counselling, mental health and helping professions. Originally trained as a mental health nurse, Lynne has been a key player in the counselling and mental health fields for many years, contributing at local, regional, national, and international levels. Lynne has a leadership role in mental health transformation in York, working with the health and mental health system partners to bring about co-designed and coproduced change.

Lynne’s current research areas include public mental health, domestic and relationship abuse and trauma, pluralistic approaches to ethics for the counselling professions, group interventions for bereavement and loss, review and evaluation of standardised mental health measures, and evaluation of the provision of online counselling. Lynne has published books on ethics in practice and research papers on multiple aspects of work in the counselling professions. Lynne is working with coeditor Professor Andrew Reeves on an Ethics in Action series for Routledge and is lead author for the series header book, Navigating Relational Ethics in Day-to-Day Practice (co-author Professor Andrew Reeves; book is in production and due for publication in September 2024).

Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, maintains an active consulting and coaching practice, and also directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, a “university without walls” for international online training in grief therapy. Neimeyer has published 30 books, including Routledge’s series on Techniques of Grief Therapy, and serves as Editor of Death Studies. The author of over 500 articles and chapters and a popular workshop presenter, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process. In recognition of his contributions, he has been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by both the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the International Network on Personal Meaning.

Mental health, wellbeing, and community facing services, groups, and projects for communities within York and North Yorkshire.

Founded in 2016, we are based on the York St John University campus.

We offer high quality and affordable counselling, coaching and different mental health and wellbeing services to communities outside York St John University, as well as free groups, drop-ins, and community projects such as our Community Language School.