Gina’s Story

Gina (pseudonym) and her daughter attend counselling at Āwhina Whānau Services.

My daughter was getting extremely bullied at school and I was very concerned for her. The counselling she is now getting at AWS is very helpful, it’s the whole feeling around how they approach people; they made me feel comfortable, safe, and keen to attend. My daughter is a lot happier now. She does things that she never wanted to do like go out – one of things she feared was going out and meeting up with friends.

My daughter tells me she looks forward to going to counselling. The goals that she has help set for herself, she is now motivated to accomplish them. She can see within herself the ability to achieve her goals and accomplishing them; it’s great. She’s getting the confidence to go out and do things for herself. Having the confidence to go out and do what she wants to do by herself, not being so dependent on someone else.

If my friend said that their daughter was getting bullied, I would share what worked for me, I’d suggest Awhina Whānau counselling. I’d share about how my daughter was affected by the bullying and the importance of being there for her; looking at the child’s well-being and waiting until the child is ready to step out and ask for help. You have to have your child on board, they need to be ready.

Initially when I started looking for help for my daughter, I went to one service and all they did was refer me to someone else. They had a few people ask questions while I sat in the room, they asked some more questions, and then they went away and came back. Then they gave me their thoughts and recommendations about what I should do next. “Oh, I will refer you to this person to do this, and I’ll refer you to that person to do that, and there’s this person to do that and there’s this person to do this.” It was so overbearing! That’s just too many people to deal with. At least at AWS I deal with one person, and one person only. Which is good because then they get to know about me and my family, they know what my child wants, they know about my child, and they help me look for services that will help my child accomplish her goals. So that comes back to that mana-treating again. Everyone has to live.