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When Tina Jones, a counsellor with a background of supporting families facing devastating loss, came to New Zealand from the UK 18 years ago, she was stunned when confronted by an especially grim statistic.
“I thought, what could happen in such a beautiful country as this?” she recalled last week. “And then I was so shocked to hear that it has the highest rates of youth suicide in the developed world.”
For eight years Jones worked with the police in Victim Support, responding to situations where young people had taken their own lives. It was that experience, she said, that gave birth to her passion for working with those in crisis.
In 2014 she co-founded Youth in Transition in Whangaparāoa, with the aim of delivering quality mental health interventions “so that no young person in our community would have to reach the point of crisis” – or even more tragically die by suicide.
Years of dedication in a challenging, crucial area of work were recognised in the recent King’s Birthday Honours, when Jones was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to suicide prevention and mental health.
She described her investiture ceremony as a very special day.
“A time for reflection, for me to look back at all the wonderful people in the team that I’ve got around me, and their unfailing belief in what we do.”
Jones said the government has recognised the need to move away from large-scale mental health service responses, to enable communities to nurture and support their loved ones. “And that is exactly what has worked for us here at Youth in Transition,” she said.
“This community has been extraordinary, the way it rallied around us and came together to help us to help these young people.”
When she began Youth in Transition,, Jones said she quickly realised that help often wasn’t available as many of the young people could not afford therapy.
“Our programme is completely free, and we’ve been very fortunate to have had so many amazing people who have funded counselling for these young people.”
Since its beginning, Youth in Transition has helped more than 700 young people and their families. It currently has 200 young people from the Hibiscus Coast and North Shore in its programme.
“These kids are not ‘the worried well’. These are kids that didn’t want to be here,” Jones said. “We are helping them to get back into life worth living.”
Jones said she saw her King’s Birthday Honours recognition as “a dedication to all the many young people I’ve had the privilege to meet along the way, and whose stories have touched my life deeply. Their courage and bravery and resilience in the face of incredible adversity has never ceased to inspire me.”
Youth in Transition was now seeing youngsters who six years ago were themselves in places of deep despair, coming back to mentor others and share their skills.
“It’s a testimony of the effectiveness of the whole community coming together, because this community is something else. We could not have done it without them.”
