Our Client Contact Team
Meet our Counsellors and Support Group Facilitators
Kath Budzinska
Client Contact Team Leader, Counsellor, Group and Workshop FacilitatorKath has been a Counsellor and Group Facilitator at GCWA since December 2015. With 4 decades of experience as a Registered Comprehensive Nurse specialising in midwifery, Kath has worked across the birth, life, and death spectrum. Kath has extensive experience supporting others in a variety of challenging and stressful situations, particularly in grief and loss. Kath is proud to be associated with The Grief Centre of WA, offering support to the bereaved of all ages, backgrounds, and beliefs. Because of Kath’s personal and professional grief experiences, she knows first-hand the effect it has on the individual, the family, and the community at large. Kath has 37 years of experience as a Registered Comprehensive Nurse and 34 years as a Registered Midwife. As a result, Kath has worked across the birth, life, and death spectrum. As well as continuing with her nursing career, Kath has completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychology and is currently employed as a counsellor at MSWA. For thirty years Kath has also been associated with drug and alcohol support. This role has had a particular focus on helping people deal with someone else’s substance abuse, and associated co-morbidities. She has experience of the impact of grief and stress on both the individual affected, and those that love and care about them.
Irena Kvin
Counsellor, Transpersonal Art Therapist, Reiki Therapist, Group and Workshop facilitator, Trainer and Assessor.Irena holds a Master’s degree in counselling and an Advanced diploma of Transpersonal Art Therapy. She has worked in Trauma-informed counselling for many years supporting children and adults with complicated grief and loss in their recovery journey. Irena offers holistic and person-centred counselling and art therapy in a safe, secure, and supportive environment. Her individual and group sessions are based on respect, empathy, mindfulness, acceptance, and empowerment. Also, Irena facilitates art therapy workshops that have a unique therapeutic essence as it contributes to improving wellbeing, meaningful connection, healthy communication, motivation, resilience, creativity, and self-expression. Currently Irena studies Naturopathy (BA of Health Science) as she strongly believes that the Nature has a powerful but gentle ability to heal our body, mind, and soul. She can provide you with information on medicinal and therapeutic herbs that help to address the health symptoms related to depression, anxiety, and emotional distress and restore your vitality. Irena has involved with the Grief Centre WA for six years ago as a student, volunteer and currently as a professional counsellor and art therapist.
Katrin Den Elzen
Counsellor, Workshop Facilitator, ResearchKatrin joined the GCWA in early 2018 as an experienced counsellor and workshop facilitator who specialises in grief and loss. Katrin offers clients a variety of approaches in addition to counselling, such as writing to work through loss, Compositionwork and PSYCH-K. Her workshops offer practical tools, inspiration, and guidance to transition from grief to more inner peace. Katrin is passionate about writing as a medium to adapt to grief as a powerful pathway that offers validation, clarity, self-understanding, and increased well-being. Katrin has personally experienced the transition from grief to rebuild a new life after the death of her husband and has written a grief memoir about her experiences of young widowhood. She has a PhD and a Masters in Creative Writing, which combined creative writing and narrative psychology. Her research focuses on utilising writing for recovery from grief and contemporary bereavement theory, combining both to develop writing exercises. In 2021 Katrin was the Lead Researcher in a Lotterywest-funded project that was run at the GCWA in association with Curtin University that investigated the efficacy of writing for well-being.
Annique Lee
Community Liaison OfficerAnnique’s background is in Administration and over the years her career spanned over many industries and many positions. From Co-ordination to Office Manager to Operations Manager. The theme of these diverse industries provided her with the important skill of liaising with people from all walks of life. Her strengths are in projects, putting together processes and procedures, quality control, seeking ways to improve systems. After her husband of 47 years passed away in 2020, Annique searched for answers, but her questions were left unanswered. Questions like who am I? where do I belong? where do I fit in? and yes, why am I still here? Leaning into her grief, she has slowly evolved into the person she is today. Her passion in sharing her experience through her grief journey and supporting others who are starting their journey, led her to the Grief Centre of WA in 2021. After retiring Annique came onboard in an administrative capacity as a volunteer with the Grief Centre of WA. She has since worked on implementing grants, liaising with the community, and supporting the centre in administrative tasks. Annique hopes that her experiences caring for her husband and navigating the system during his illness and after his passing will be of benefit to the community.
Brenda Dagnall
Counsellor, Group FacilitatorBrenda is a supportive and caring counsellor and group facilitator, who has followed her passion for walking alongside others through life's challenges, to specialise in grief counseling. Journeying through her own bereavement, supporting family members through their bereavement, witnessing the many changes and losses brought by her father's disability and supporting friends through grief, has given her valuable insight into the human capacity to bear heavy losses, adapt, grow and go on to live joyful, meaningful lives, accepting that they have been forever changed by their loss. Brenda's genuine interest in others allows clients to feel their grief story is witnessed, and that they have a companion in their grief journey who can help them explore their grief, understand the common experiences in grief and offer innovative and creative techniques to assist clients in coping and growing through grief.
