He was formerly Chair and now Life President of Cruse: Bereavement Care, and organization which supports bereaved people in the United Kingdom.

He has acted as consultant and adviser following several disasters and, at the invitation of UNICEF, he acted as consultant in setting up the Trauma Recovery Program in Rwanda in April 1995.

At the invitation of the British government, he helped to set up a program of support in New York to assist families from the United Kingdom who were flown out following the terrorist outrages on 11th September 2001.

In April 2005 Parkes was sent by Help the Hospices with Ann Dent to India to assess the psychological needs of people bereaved by the tsunami.

Recently Parke's work has focused on traumatic bereavements (with special reference to violent deaths and the cycle of violence) and the Roots in the Attachments of Childhood of the Problems that can follow Losses in Adult Life.

He was awarded an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, for his services to bereaved people in June 1996.

He is the author of numerous publications, and the most recent is Love and Loss: the Roots of Grief and its Complications (Routledge, London & New York (2006). His book Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life was translated to Portuguese and edited by Summus Ed. (Sao Paulo) in 1998.

He is Vice Chair of the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement, IWG.

He will speak on necessities of the bereaved in emergency situations.