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Recent Board News
We welcome Dr. Anna Vella who has agreed to join the Board of ICCFR. As President of Cana Movement, Malta, (a founder member organisation of the Commission) Dr. Vella has followed the work of ICCFR for some years.
We took our farewell from Board Member Anna Castellani Tarabini (Italy) who retired last autumn, after 8 years of serving on the Board of ICCFR.
03/2008
Death of Nicholas Tyndall, Commission Chair for 16 years: a Tribute.
(15 August 1928 - 19 April 2006)
Nick, as he was known, was the second and most influential of the organisation’s Chairs (ICCFR was then known as ICMIR). He held the position for sixteen years (1971 – 1986), building on the heritage of IUFO’s international network and leading the organisation through a series of annual Meetings (today’s Conferences) which addressed the issues of the day for married couples and the workers which supported them.
The nature of the organisation changed significantly under his direction. He created an international community with a spirit of teamwork and built a Board which acted as the think-tank which was, and is, the heart of the organisation’s development. He also introduced groupwork as a vital and creative feature of the “Meetings”. But perhaps it was his talent for drawing together people from quite different backgrounds and facilitating friendships for which he was most valued. He was a serious man with a delight in social events in which he revealed a dry sense of humour. During his period as Chair he was also the Chief Executive of Britain’s National Marriage Guidance Council (NMGC) (now Relate), at that time the primary source in England of counselling support for married couples.
His vision still inspires the Commission – thank you Nick.
Derek Hill
(an NMGC colleague)
06/2006
A new Vice-Chair
 Claire Missen has accepted an invitation to act as the Commission’s Vice-Chair. She feels honoured to be appointed as Vice-Chair and looks forward to assisting our Chair – Terry Prendergast. Claire has worked as a Marriage Counsellor for twenty two years. Formerly, she was employed by the Marriage and Relationships Counselling Services in Dublin, Ireland. She became actively involved in ICCFR after presenting a workshop at the Commission’s 2001 conference in Stockholm. Now retired from MRCS Claire is working privately as a counsellor and supervisor. Currently she is also the Chairperson of the Irish Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and a consultant to the Church of Ireland Marriage Council.
06/2006
Louis Camilleri resigns
 Louis Camilleri has worked for 36 years as the Director of the Cana Movement, Malta, an organisation which offers a variety of services in support of marriage. He has served as one of the Commission’s Board members for many years and was responsible for its financial accounts for a period. Louis has been obliged to resign because in future his work in Malta will be dedicated to other aspects of the Church’s work.
Past and present members of the ICCFR Board, together with all who met him during the Commission’s conferences, express their thanks to Louis for his constant commitment to the purposes of ICCFR, for his friendship, and for his quietly offered creative encouragement for the Commission’s activities. He will be much missed. We send him good wishes for his future work and role.
06/2006
A new Chair for the Commission
 Terry Prendergast has agreed to serve as the Chair of ICCFR/CIRCF and has been active since early July 2005. His email address is
Terry is currently Chief Executive of Marriage Care, a voluntary organisation supporting couples and families throughout England. Terry’s earlier professional activities include a senior management role in Relate, an involvement with the Church of England’s Children’s Society, acting as a Regional Social Work Manager in the north of England, and work as a psychiatric social worker qualified as a Group-Analytic psychotherapist. He has been married for 35 years and has two children and three grandchildren.
The members of The ICCFR/CIRCF Board are delighted that Terry is willing to take on the responsibilities of chairing the Commission and look forward to working with him to plan and implement future activities.
08/2005
Derek Hill retires
 Derek Hill retired from his role of Chair at ICCFR’s international conference in Vienna, in June 2005. In a simple good-bye ceremony at the Palais Liechtenstein in Vienna, the Commission’s Board thanked Derek for his enormous contribution to ICCFR.
Derek attended his first ICCFR conference in 1992 on behalf of Relate, where he was Head of Counselling for many years. His active involvement began with the preparations for the 1998 ICCFR conference which Relate hosted in Oxford, England. Commission Members recall with fondness and admiration his memorable skills as Group Facilitator at the conferences, and it was almost with regret that the decision was made to exchange this benefit for the much greater one to the Commission when he accepted in the summer of 2001 the invitation to take on the role of ICCFR Chair. He applied to this role those same qualities of being able to pay personal attention to each member whilst always being mindful and inclusive of the Commission’s needs as a whole.
During his time in office, and thanks to his initiative, the Commission made rapid progress in developing a professionally structured approach to its work and its conferences. Derek introduced a number of innovations for ICCFR which helped it to become more relevant and contemporary. One of his first steps in office was to write the ICCFR Mission Statement, which helped shape the identity and clarified the purpose of the organisation. He ensured that its conference proceedings were published each year and disseminated worldwide. Striving ever towards greater accessibility for the international community to the Commission’s work he was instrumental in taking the next ambitious step of setting up the ICCFR Website – both the design and its contents are his work to date.
ICCFR would like to acknowledge with gratitude how much it owes to Derek – to his vision, his dedication and his initiative. We wish him and Jill well in their retirement!
06/2005
Gerlind Richards’ honour
In 2003 Gerlind Richards, our General Secretary, was invested with the MBE by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace in recognition for her long and outstanding service to the Commission. We are proud of, and grateful for, Gerlind’s tireless efforts on the Commission’s behalf.
06/2003
ICCFR Co-Chair Retires
 Dr. jur. Herman Pas (Belgium) has retired from the roles of the Commission’s Co-Chair and Board Member after an active involvement in its affairs, which began in the 1960s. In 1999 he compiled and edited “Vive la Différence”, an account of the Commission’s activities between 1953 and 1999. The publication is a major resource for those interested in the development of research, social policy, legislation and therapy associated with couples and families. The gratitude of Commission members for so long and valuable a period of service was expressed during the 2003 conference. Herman has expressed a wish to sustain contact with, and an input into, the Commission, albeit less formally, and the ICCFR Board is delighted to learn that he will participate in our Tallinn conference, 13-16 June 2004.
06/2003
Martin Koschorke Retires
 The Board of ICCFR has seen a number of significant changes in its membership recently, amongst them the retirement of one of its longest-serving members, Martin Koschorke who retired after fifteen years’ service on the Board.
Those who have worked with Martin will recognise how great a loss his retirement is for the Commission. He is an ‘ideas man’, someone with a capacity to think analytically and creatively. His personal integrity results in him being a challenging colleague but one whose impish sense of humour and whose lack of an undue sense of self-importance makes him an ideal member of any working group. He has demonstrated skills as a teacher/lecturer, a group facilitator and an event organiser and he took the initiative in establishing Professional Seminars as an adjunct to ICCFR conferences’ main programmes. Not least, his interest in and contacts with African and Eastern European countries resulted in the Commission being able to engage professionals in those territories in its work.
While wishing Martin a happy and fulfilling retirement we hope very much that he will continue to contribute to the Commission’s work by joining us during our conferences.
06/2003
More retirements
In recent years the Commission’s Board has also lost the services of colleagues whose contributions have been very much valued: Ingrid Rëgno (Sweden), Dianne Gibson (Australia) , John Hannan (Ireland) and, not least, Co-Chair Herman Pas.
06/2003
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