Love in Covid Times with Charlie Howard

Published: April 27, 2020, 4:43 p.m.

Love in Covid Times is a collaboration with On Our Radar, bringing stories from the margins to the front page. These are short podcasts with people facing challenging times, or helping people facing those challenges. We cannot fully understand the impact of this crisis, just how people are adapting to the rapidly changing context. Charlie Howard is a social innovator and psychologist. She talks here about her clinical work. We refer to the paediatrician Frank Oberklaid from Melbourne Children’s Hospital in the conversation. He too has been struggling with online therapy. We have been working from home now for over a month. I run my two clinics from home via telehealth - 70% of the hospital clinics are now run this way – and Fay sees her clients in the same way. It’s not too bad for old patients, but very difficult establishing a relationship with new patients. All staff of the research institute are now working from home, and all the hospitals in Melbourne including RCH are preparing for the tsunami that we all hope will not come. I am on zoom all day, and it is tiring in a different sort of way, more so than long days at the hospital. I am supposed to be working 0.8 but it seems busier than that.