Advocacy and preparation
Help working out what you want to say, preparing questions, organising information and approaching an important meeting more confidently.
Advocacy and family support
Help with difficult conversations.
Death, dying and grief can make already difficult conversations harder.
Damien can help you prepare, communicate clearly and create a calmer way for people to talk—without taking decisions away from the people responsible for making them.
Different situations need different roles
A clearer way to approach what needs to be said.
You may need support for your own voice, a structured conversation involving several people, or help understanding why a decision has become stuck. Damien will clarify the role before substantive work begins.
Facilitated family conversations
A calmer, more structured space for people to share information, hear different concerns and identify what can be agreed or addressed next.
Conflict support
Help slowing a difficult conversation down, identifying the real issues and considering practical ways forward when everyone involved is willing to participate.
Conversations Damien may be able to help with
When people feel unheard, uncertain or stuck.
- Preparing for a difficult end-of-life conversation.
- Helping a family understand what someone wants.
- Speaking with a health, palliative-care or aged-care team.
- Supporting a person who feels overwhelmed or unheard.
- Dividing caring, communication or practical responsibilities.
- Different views about a funeral or memorial service.
- Family disagreement about ceremony, participation or ashes.
- Questions about how children or young people should be included.
- A conversation that has become stuck after someone has died.
- Understanding which service or professional may be able to help next.
You do not need to decide which service label fits before making contact. Begin with what is happening, who is involved and what you hope may become clearer.
Advocacy and preparation
Helping your voice and questions be heard clearly.
Damien can help you identify what matters, organise the information you already have and prepare questions for an important conversation.
With your permission, he may also attend an agreed meeting as a support person or help you communicate with a health, palliative-care, aged-care, funeral or community service.
Damien cannot make decisions for you, access information without permission or require another organisation to act. Medical, legal and operational decisions remain with the person and the professionals or decision-makers who hold responsibility for them.
When Damien is supporting one particular person as an advocate, he will not present himself as a neutral person acting for every family member. The role and its boundaries are made clear from the beginning.
Facilitated family conversations
A calmer and more structured way to talk.
A supported conversation may help people discuss a diagnosis, care wishes, caring responsibilities, children, funeral or memorial choices, burial or cremation, ashes, participation, or questions that remain difficult after a death.
The purpose is not to force everybody to agree. A useful outcome may be greater understanding, a practical next step, or clarity about what remains unresolved and needs another professional's help.
Conflict support
Looking beneath the immediate disagreement.
Death-related conflict can also carry grief, exhaustion, fear, guilt, old family history, different beliefs or uncertainty about what the person wanted.
Damien can help people slow the conversation down, identify the real issues and consider practical ways forward when participation is voluntary and the setting is suitable.
He does not decide who is right, impose an outcome or provide legal advice.
How it works
A defined role before the conversation begins.
1. Begin briefly
An initial call or email establishes what is happening, who is involved and what you hope may change. This first contact is not a full counselling session, legal assessment or emergency service.
2. Clarify the role
Damien will explain whether he is supporting one person, helping with a shared conversation or providing another clearly defined service.
3. Prepare where needed
Separate preparation may help clarify the issue, identify questions, understand what each person needs and determine whether a joint discussion is suitable.
4. Identify the next step
The conversation may produce an agreement, a practical task, an unresolved question or a referral. Decisions remain with the people who have the right and responsibility to make them.
When a shared conversation may not be suitable
Safety and the right kind of help come first.
A joint conversation is not right for every situation. Separate support or specialist help may be more appropriate where there is:
- Fear, intimidation, domestic or family violence, or coercive control.
- Immediate danger or another serious safety concern.
- A significant power imbalance that prevents free participation.
- Active court proceedings or an urgent legal dispute.
- Uncertainty about legal authority, decision-making capacity or consent.
Damien may recommend a solicitor, health service, appropriately qualified specialist, domestic-violence service, police or emergency service where that is the safer or more suitable pathway.
Damien does not assess legal capacity, determine who can consent to treatment, interpret legal documents, decide who has authority over funeral arrangements or resolve competing legal rights. He does not provide legal, financial or medical advice.
Privacy and records
Clear expectations when more than one person is involved.
Before a family or group conversation begins, Damien will explain who is involved, what the conversation is for, what information may be shared during it and the limits of confidentiality.
He will treat information carefully, but cannot guarantee that another participant will keep what they hear private.
Any notes Damien makes are private working records for his own professional use. They are not written family summaries, agreed action lists or reports supplied to participants or other people.
Information is kept separately from general enquiries, marketing contacts and Macquarie Valley Funerals records, subject to the privacy, legal and safety arrangements explained before the service begins.
Working alongside other services
Support around the professional responsible for each decision.
With appropriate permission, Damien may support communication involving doctors, palliative-care teams, aged-care services, funeral professionals, ceremony leaders, lawyers and community organisations.
His role is to help people understand what is happening, express what matters and navigate the next conversation—not to replace the professional responsible for medical care, legal advice, funeral arrangements or another specialist decision.
Macquarie Valley Funerals
Two complementary roles, kept clear.
Damien is General Manager of Macquarie Valley Funerals and Monuments. Practical guidance and family support provided as part of a funeral arranged there remain within the funeral home's service.
Any separate service through The Death Guide has its own purpose, consent, privacy arrangements and fees. Further afield, Damien may work alongside a family's chosen funeral director where the arrangement is appropriate and everybody understands the roles involved.
Flexible support, clear arrangements
The role, time and fee are agreed first.
Brief introductory calls and email enquiries are free. If further support is appropriate, Damien will explain the service, role, time involved and fee before anything is booked.
Support may involve an individual preparation session, a facilitated family conversation, attendance at an agreed meeting or a defined period of advocacy and coordination.
Appointments may take place by telephone, video call or in person in a home, workplace, funeral setting or another mutually agreed location where privacy and safety can be managed.
Damien works across the Central West and regularly travels through Mudgee, Rylstone, Kandos, Gulgong, Bathurst, Orange, Dubbo, Lithgow, Coolah, Dunedoo and beyond. Remote support may also be possible across greater NSW.
Telephone enquiries are welcome between 10am and 3pm, Monday to Friday. Email enquiries may be sent at any time, and appointments may be available outside telephone hours by arrangement.
If urgent help is needed
The Death Guide is not an emergency or 24-hour crisis service.
If life is in danger, someone may act on thoughts of suicide or urgent medical assistance is needed, call Triple Zero (000).
You do not have to find the right words first
Tell Damien what is happening.
You may only know that a conversation has become too difficult, someone is not being heard or your family needs help working out what happens next. Begin there, and Damien can help identify the most suitable way forward.
Telephone enquiries: 10am–3pm Monday–Friday. Email enquiries may be sent at any time. Appointments may be available outside telephone hours by arrangement.