Shelley
Cohen Konrad,
PhD, LCSW, FNAP
Director, Center for Excellence in Collaborative Education; Director School of Social Work
University of New England
Dr. Shelley Cohen Konrad is Professor and Director of the University of New England School of Social Work and founding Director (2009) of the Center for Excellence in Collaborative Education, an initiative that promotes shared learning, research, collaborative practice and service. Shelley has 30 years of clinical social work experience serving children and families. She co-founded two community programs, Kids First and Touchstone that offer low barrier services to children and their identified family systems. Shelley’s research and scholarship focuses on relational practices, arts and social work, affective learning, stakeholder engagement, and interprofessional pedagogy. Her the second edition of her book Practice with Children and Families: A Relational Perspective was published in 2019. She is an avid reader, art collector, gardener, baker, and enjoys time with her family on the coast of Maine.
Presenting at the Nexus Summit:
Every day, mounting COVID-19 deaths in the U. S. are publicly recorded and privately grieved. However, less visible losses are unaccounted for, including those of frontline workers caring for the sick and dying; the unexpectedly unemployed; people charged with making morally and ethically impossible decisions; and innumerable others vicariously witnessing the “cruel capriciousness” of the pandemic. In myriad ways we are connected to uncertain grief our lives changed forever, not knowing what will be the next "normal" that will disappear.
Ambiguous loss describes responses to losses that…