project sequence and acknowledgements
In my practice I have a special interest in working together with patients to overcome anxiety, phobia and other dental barriers, especially with people who have a history of trauma. I always feel inspired by what we can achieve together, both in terms of oral health over time and also how empowering our relationship can be for patients, and the larger life changes that can flow from that. Please see the project background page of this website here: https://zaksdental.com.au/trauma-informed-dental-care-adult-survivors-sexual-assault/project-background/.
This interest led to several great conversations with Juliet Summers, the ICT (Information Communication Technology) team leader from the South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault. (SECASA: https://www.secasa.com.au/). The Victorian (Australia) Centres Against Sexual Assault (CASAs) are non-profit, government funded organisations that provide support and intervention to women, children and men who are victim/survivors of sexual assault. Juliet is also very passionate about her work and the importance of oral health.
We discussed the potential of working together to help both survivors and dentists with several widespread issues that haven’t been comprehensively addressed to date in Australia. We recognised the opportunity to make a great contribution as a result of this very unique collaboration between SECASA and a private dentist for the first time.
In 2016 a survey about oral health was distributed throughout the Victorian CASA network. An online version was live until mid 2017. I was involved with giving feedback from a dentist’s perspective on issues which I thought would be of interest to dentists, such as asking suggestions from survivors on what we could do better, and how best to help them. I would like to acknowledge and send my thanks to all the victim/survivors who contributed to the CASA dental survey.
For the first few months of 2017, I immersed myself in reading and researching trauma, sexual assault and the trauma informed approach and then decided to write two grant applications. Excitingly I won them both; the project was off and running! The first grant was for $3,000 from PSA insurance in their ‘supporting projects you support’ or SPYS program (http://www.psainsurance.com.au/about). The second was for $6,000 from the Australian dental health foundation (ADHF) in partnership with Wrigleys (http://www.adhf.org.au/study-and-community-grants/adhf-wrigley-grant/). Thank you very much to these funding bodies, as without their support this project would not have happened.
It was agreed that videos would be the best medium for the project and that all of the grant money would go to funding the professional filming and production of these. Part of my research involved discussing ideas and concepts in detail over several hours with director and producer Sarah Burrell-Davis of Red Hat films (https://www.redhatfilms.com.au/). I want to acknowledge and thank her for her time, very valuable advice and for the documents she prepared for the grant applications. I also want to thank videographer Dan Murphy (http://www.mandurphy.net/) for his helpful ideas.
Mira Chazan (Counsellor/Advocate) from West CASA (http://westcasa.org.au/) was also involved from the very beginning and has been a wonderful support and expert to consult with the whole way through the project: thank you Mira! In addition to Juliet and Mira at this time, Miles Summers (Graphics/Computer design) and Donovan Pill (Counsellor/Advocate) from SECASA, and Kate Harrison (designer/animator/artist) (https://kate-h42.myportfolio.com/projects ) all became very closely involved, volunteering extensive time and their expertise. I want to acknowledge and thank this incredible team!
This level of involvement from the SECASA team would not have been possible without Carolyn Worth, the manager of SECASA, who allowed her employees to spend so many months of their working hours on this project and who also became involved directly later on. Thank you Carolyn!
Cam Smeal from D4Digital (http://d4digital.com.au/) was then chosen by the group as the videographer and director. At this stage I had written a very early draft of the dental lecture script and the topics for the survivor videos had been chosen. These topics were based on the strongest themes from survivor feedback in the CASA dental survey.
Over the following 6 months I continued to research, expand and refine the dentist lecture script, which grew into 3 longer lectures running for just under 2 hours altogether. The initial brief for the project that we gave to Cam turned out to be a fraction of what he actually produced, as both the dentist and survivor arms of the project evolved and expanded so much over the following months. Cam’s commitment to the project was unwavering; he continued to freely donate his time, expertise and equipment as needed. I want to acknowledge and thank Cam for his incredible skill, talent, and for completing this enormous volume of work! Without his dedication to our vision and the very generous donation of his time and energy, a project of this size would not have been possible.
I feel so grateful to have received very valuable feedback from the many supportive people who listened to me read the dentist lecture script to them, and sent written feedback as it evolved. I want to acknowledge all of these brilliant volunteers, many of whom spent hours with me on this: Juliet, Miles and Donovan from SECASA. Mira, who coordinated two readings of the script at West CASA, allowing feedback from herself and Counsellor/Advocates Georgia Taylor, Jill Faulkner, Penny McDonald, Lejla Arnautovic and Tara Schintler, (all at West CASA). Jane Kelson in London via Skype at all hours and via email, Teresa Castley, who donated hours of her time on the phone, email and in person in Daylesford, dentists Dr Rachael McDonald and Dr Andre Nowicki, clinical psychologist Louisa Livingstone, Kate Harrison (who has been an incredible support the whole way through), Seth Laster, Karey Harrison and Susy Bertoncini.
Thank you to the staff at SECASA and CASA house (http://www.casahouse.com.au/) for your assistance in finding survivors willing to speak on camera about their experiences. Thank you to all the survivors who volunteered to take part. Thank you Juliet and Miles for your enormous courage in making this project your video debut! I want to thank Deb for travelling down from the country and appearing on camera and for her wonderful insights and energy. Thank you to Carolyn Worth for taking time out of her very busy schedule to be interviewed for the survivor videos and for her incredibly valuable insights into victim/survivor behaviour and the barriers to their achievement of oral health. Thank you to CASA house and SECASA for the loan of rooms for shooting the videos and for providing counselling support for the survivors.
After the survivor footage was filmed, the Promo video was shot and photos for the PowerPoint slides were taken at East St Kilda Dental Clinic (http://www.eaststkildadental.com.au/). Thank you Dr Eddy Goldman for letting us do the filming and photography at your practice, which is also my workplace. Thank you to Kate for being the patient model for the photos and to Juliet for her photography. We had a lot of fun doing this shoot! I put the PowerPoint presentation together over the following weeks. Thank you to the SECASA clients for permission to use their artwork in the slides.
The next stage involved filming the lectures for dentists, which took place on the 1st of December 2017, a 36-degree day with flash flooding in Melbourne. Thank you to Monash Health (http://www.monashhealth.org/) for allowing us to film in the main lecture theatre at the Monash Medical Centre, Clayton. I want to acknowledge and thank videographer Irene Metter (https://vimeo.com/user20640020/about) for filming the lectures as the assistant videographer, and for the loan of her valuable second camera for the day. Thank you very much Carolyn Worth for introducing me in the first dental lecture. Thank you to Juliet and Kate for your fantastic help on this long day of filming and assisting with the many production tasks on the day. Thank you Cam for being so wonderful to work with, supporting me through the filming process and for your excellent work. This project is my first time on camera.
Over the following weeks I wrote and refined the scripts for the two survivor videos I presented, with valuable feedback from Juliet, Carolyn, Mira, Jane, Teresa and Kate. These were then filmed. Thank you to Cam and to Kate Walter for the use of your house for the location and to Kate for your fabulous wardrobe assistance on the day.
Next at my house, Cam, who is also a musician, recorded me on the piano and we chose one of my pieces to be the theme music for the whole series. Thank you Cam for this fantastic day. Over the following weeks I spent countless hours in Cam’s studio refining every moment of the videos. Thank you Cam for your amazing attention to detail and valuable insights into the world of video editing.
Finally, I created my YouTube channel and added the videos to my website. They are also available on the SECASA Website (https://www.youtube.com/user/SouthEasternCASA/search?query=dental), the West CASA website (http://westcasa.org.au/) and will shortly be available on the Dental Health Services Victoria and many other websites- stay tuned. Feel free to disseminate them widely.
It has been a great pleasure to work with so many amazing people who believe in this project. This has been an incredibly intense and rich experience filled with new learning, challenges, extremely long hours and wonderful experiences. I hope that this project makes a valuable contribution to the dental profession in Australia and around the world, and that the information is useful and highly beneficial to victim/survivors of sexual assault and trauma.
Dr Sharonne Zaks JUNE 2018