Invited Speakers

Driving
Angela Berndt

Dr Berndt is an occupational therapist and academic.  She graduated in 1987 and worked in inpatient, rehabilitation, community, forensic and residential settings with adult clients.  

In 1998 she completed her driver assessment and rehabilitation training and began her research career with participation in a study of people with dementia and driving capacity.  That study later became the basis of her doctoral thesis.  Her research focus continues to explore the occupational relationships to dementia, disability, driving and community mobility, with some side trips into clinical reasoning and teaching and learning research. 

Since moving from the health sector to education, Angela has won four teaching awards and three Chancellor’s awards for community engagement.  She is Program Director of Occupational Therapy at University of South Australia.  Angela graduated from the Australian Institute of Company Directors course and was the President of Board of Occupational Therapy Australia.   



Environmental Modifications Catherine Bridge

Prof Bridge has a significant National and International reputation in the area of enabling environments and innovative technology relative to wellbeing and quality of life. She has been instrumental in researching the intersection of Assistive Technology and Built Environment Interventions on human performance. Her funded research has been sustained and substantial. Over the last decade her grant income has totalled several million dollars. 

Her housing research portfolio includes: research on housing and care; housing and health; older people and sustainability; accessibility of the built environment and extensive research on home modification interventions. She directs the Home Modification Information Clearinghouse (HMinfo) which was nominated for the NSW Premiers Public Service Award in 2006. HMinfo is a recurrent national research project funded through the Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP). HMinfo aims to develop and disseminate an evidence base for Home Modification interventions and it underpins the Ageing in place strategy and Age and Disability reform programs in Australia. 

Prof Bridge has also led two projects that have developed software for use by older people in assessing and changing their environment to improve their quality of life.

Attend Catherine's presentation The History and Future of Home Modifications in Australia: Building an evidence base for practice.


Knowledge Translation
Isobel Hubbard

Dr Isobel Hubbard is an academic researcher, occupational therapist, company director and online learning consultant. Having convened postgraduate education in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle for many years, she now supports other academics in their teaching and learning activities.

Isobel has published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at national and international conferences. She has investigated associations between upper limb recovery, task-specific training and changes in brain activation early after stroke; stroke survival and morbidity in older Australian women and return-to-driving after stroke. Isobel represents Occupational Therapy Australia on the Australian Stroke Coalition.

Attend Isobel’s presentation From Knowing to Doing: Why Is This So Difficult?


Paediatrics
Toni Knight

Toni Knight is a psychotherapist and presenter who specialises in anxiety, compassion fatigue, and burnout. She has over 20 years of experience, beginning with her own compassion fatigue when she was a psychologist in a juvenile detention centre. Since then Toni has taught professional skills to welfare and youth work students, taught counselling skills to hypnotherapists, and taught workers to manage burnout and compassion fatigue.

Her passion is to support and empower professional caregivers, believing that their work is both critical to our collective wellbeing, and generally undervalued. She is writing her first book on the subject of burnout and compassion fatigue, and has a particular interest in the many powerful barriers to implementing familiar self-care strategies.

Toni believes that a clear, simple message paints a thousand words, especially after five clients, three meetings and a dozen memos.

Attend Toni's presentation Why don’t we care for ourselves? Understanding the systemic barriers to prioritising self care is necessary for managing burnout and compassion fatigue.


Rehabilitation
Jacki Liddle

Jacki Liddle is an occupational therapist and researcher at the University of Queensland. She has been involved in clinical research since the turn of the century when she unsuccessfully tried to pass on a very interesting clinical question to the University Department – and has been exploring interesting questions ever since. She focuses on areas related to quality of life, participation and life transitions – particularly for older people and people with neurological conditions and their families. 

Her research has developed a program to support people with driving cessation (CarFreeMe), technology to measure community mobility outcomes, and she is currently working in the engineering department where she is co-designing technology with people living the dementia, their care partners and an interdisciplinary team.

Attend Jacki’s presentation Doing rehabilitation right: Do we need to shift occupational therapy practices when taking a human rights approach to rehabilitation?


Occupational Therapy Australia
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