Our expert team are here to help you live through your loss
We have a wonderful team of highly qualified and compassionate grief counsellors onboard at the Grief Centre.
Our counsellors are listed below with the locations where they offer counselling. All of our counsellors also provide their therapy online.
Please call us on 0800 331 333 or email admin@griefcentre.org.nz to enquire.
Kaimahi kaitohutohu
Amy Benjamin | Averill Waters | Christine Murphy |
Coralie Gibson | Dave Perryman | Debbie Penlington |
Diane Collins | Diane Giles | Donald Rowlands |
Eunice Choi | Graham Southwell | Jacqui Ivankovich |
Jacqueline Pritchard | Jan Lee | Jennifer O'Flynn |
Johann van den Berg | Julie Blakelock-Smith | Julia Sheikh |
Aida Dehkhoda | David Finn | Matthew Flynn |
Megan Hutchings | Monica Barnett-Harris | Rosalind Heathcote |
Nola Forsyth | Simran Lamba | Sunny Lin |
Valentina Bargiacchi | Viola Beintken | Val Leveson |
Seno Tuinukuafe | Karen Lupe | Barbara Wright |
MNZAC
NZ Diploma of Psychosynthesis Counselling
NZ Diploma of Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy
Karen Lupe Ilinanoa
Karen completed her training in counselling and psychotherapy with the Psychosynthesis Institute. She works empathically across a spectrum of issues, including loss and grief, bereavement, loss of a significant relationship e.g divorce, injury-related loss, trauma, depression, anxiety, existential distress relating to one's spirituality and cultural issues.
Karen is trained in Jungian dream work. Her focus is on creating a safe, warm counselling space to work collaboratively with clients on their own unique healing journeys towards health, fulfilment and well-being.
Jacqui Ivankovich
Jacqui has eight years of experience working with rangatahi, rainbow communities and whฤnau. She studied a Diploma of Counselling and is a Member of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors.
Jacqui brings a warmth, realness and deeply empathetic energy to her practice. She takes a holistic, person-centred, strengths-based approach when working with people and holds a person's knowledge of themselves at the forefront of their therapeutic relationship.
Jacqui is the mother of one teenage daughter and lives on the North Shore of Tฤmaki Makaurau Auckland, where she enjoys spending time with friends/whฤnau, immersing herself in nature and enjoying coffee at some of her local cafes.
NZAC
Diploma Counselling
MNZAC
LLB / Post Graduate Diploma Counselling
Matthew Flynn
Matthew comes to counselling from a wide and varied background in law, community involvement and working with young people. He has travelled extensively and brings to counselling a keen interest in the commonality of issues people of all ages and backgrounds experience though out their lives.
By listening, talking and sharing their experiences, clients can receive help and support to work towards regaining their lives after experiencing loss and grief. Matthew is able to meet clients during the day, but for those who prefer an evening, times after 5pm can be arranged in Birkenhead.
MNZAC
Bachelor of Counselling
Bachelor of Arts
Eunice Choi
Eunice has a passion for supporting peopleโs efforts to overcome life challenges through professional and collaborative counselling practice. She works with adolescents and adults dealing with issues around anxiety, depression, cultural issues, loss and grief and trauma. As an Asian migrant herself, Eunice particularly desires to help migrants to settle and thrive with resilience and hope in New Zealand.
She has special interest in all areas of grief and trauma caused by losses. Her counselling approach is integrated based on person-centred and narrative therapy. She offers counselling in Korean and English. Eunice currently works for the Grief Centre and in private practice.
์ ๋์ค (์ต๊ณ ์ด) ์๋ด์ฌ๋ ์ ๋ฌธ์ ์ธ ์๋ด์ ํตํด ์ถ์ ์ด๋ ค์์ ์ง๋ฉดํ์ ๋ถ๋ค์ด ์ฌ๋ฆฌ์ ์ธ ๋ฌธ์ ๋ฅผ ๊ทน๋ณตํ๋ ์ผ์ ์ด์ ์ ๊ฐ์ง๊ณ ์์ต๋๋ค. ์ฒญ์๋ ๊ณผ ์ฑ์ธ์ ๋ถ์, ์ฐ์ธ๊ฐ, ๋ฌธํ์ ์ธ ๋ฌธ์ , ์์ค๊ฐ๊ณผ ์ฌํ, ํธ๋ผ์ฐ๋ง์ ๊ดํด ์๋ดํ๊ณ ์์ต๋๋ค. ๋ด์ง๋๋๋ก ์ด์ฃผํ์ ์์์๋ค์ด ์๋ง๊ฐ์ด๋ฐ ๊ณํํ๋ ๋ฏธ๋๋ฅผ ์ฑ์ทจํ ์ ์๋๋ก ๋์์ ๋๋ฆฌ๊ณ ์ถ์ดํ๋ฉฐ ํน๋ณํ, ๋ชจ๋ ๋ถ์ผ์ ์ฌํ๊ณผ ์์ค๋ก ์ธํ ํธ๋ผ์ฐ๋ง์ ๊ดํ ์๋ด์ ๊น์ ๊ด์ฌ์ ๊ฐ์ง๊ณ ์์ต๋๋ค. ์๋ด๊ธฐ๋ฒ์ ๋ด๋ด์ ์ค์ฌ๊ณผ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐ ์น๋ฃ๋ฅผ ๋ฐํ์ผ๋ก ๋ค์ํ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ์ ํตํฉํ์ฌ ์ฌ์ฉํ๋ฉฐ, ํ๊ตญ์ด์ ์์ด๋ก ๊ฐ๋ฅํฉ๋๋ค. ํ์ฌ ๊ทธ๋ฆฌํ ์ผํฐ์์ ์ผํ๋ฉฐ ๊ฐ์ธ ์๋ด์ ํจ๊ป ์ ๊ณตํ๊ณ ์์ต๋๋ค.
Graham J. Southwell
Graham is a registered psychotherapist with a masterโs degree in psychotherapy from AUT University in Auckland. His early experience was at Auckland Sexual Health but for the last 10 years he has been focusing on supporting clients from Hospice. Working with individuals and/or families, he brings a caring and empathic approach to those who are experiencing grief and loss through bereavement.
The grief associated with end of life can be devastating; it may lead one to question what life is all about and to re-evaluate oneโs values and core beliefs. The opportunity to explore this grief in a warm, safe, non-judgmental environment is often the first step towards healing and rebuilding oneโs life.
Registered Psychotherapist (PBANZ)
Member of New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists (MNZAP)
Master of Psychotherapy (Hons)
Post Graduate Diploma in Psychosocial Studies
MNZAC
Professional Supervisor
PGDIP Narrative Counselling
Coralie Gibson
Coralie is a registered Counsellor with NZAC and holds a Post-grad diploma in Narrative Counselling. Coralie takes a person-centered and strength-focused approach. Coralie brings 30+ years of experience working in the health care profession being a Nurse and a Midwife. She enjoys working alongside all people and considers it a privilege to journey with people through their loss and grief.
Coralie offers clinical supervision to professionals and offers a supportive and nourishing experience so you can continue to work safely, ethically and look after yourself.
Diane Collins
Diane has 16 years experience as a counsellor specialising in loss and grief, and trauma. She is a person-centered counsellor and integrates other modalities such as art and sand tray to suit each clients needs. She also works as a counsellor in Pukekohe, working with clients of all ages and ethnicities, and works with Victim Support there.
Loss and grief is a personal journey that affects us all in different ways and sometimes, in ways we do not expect. Being able to tell our story in a safe environment can help us accept our new way of being, and gain an understanding of the way we feel. Diane recognises that each personโs story is different and that we are affected by grief in different ways. She honours that with compassion, empathy and respect. She also understands the importance of working within each persons culture and belief system.
MNZAC
Associate Member of Te Rarawa
MNZAC
MSW (A) Hons
Registered Celebrant
MANZATSA
MCANZ
Professional Supervisor
Nola Forsyth
Nola has worked in social services and counselling for many years and is a trained Professional Supervisor. She now provides Supervision only. Nola has managed a team of counselling staff, along with counselling students and researchers and has counselled a very wide range of people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
Nola has a breadth of experience in individual, couples, family and group work, including counselling for loss and grief, relationship issues, depression and anxiety, eating issues, sexually harmful behaviour, domestic violence, and employee assistance. She is warm, empathetic, safe, ethical and client centered.
Diane Giles
Diane worked for eight years as a Lifeline counsellor, and three years with the Antara Natural Health Centre, as well as being in private practice. Diane has a passion in holding a safe space to facilitate greater insights into thoughts, behaviours and emotions which cause suffering. She is an experienced loss and grief counsellor.
Diane has seven children and has been a foster parent for many years. Diane has also gone through the Russian adoption process. She has been a passionate teacher of the Montessori Method for many years and has her own Centre supporting both children and parents.
Diploma Counselling, Teaching ECE, LMC
Certificate Transactional Analysis Counselling, Applied Grief Studies, Applied Dreamwork, Group Leadership and Facilitation
NZQA Lifeline Trained Counsellor
PGDipED (Counselling and Guidance)
B.Couns
MNZC
MBAC
International Member ACA
Jacqueline Pritchard
Jacquiโs counselling approach is integrative, flexible and diverse and each person is treated as the unique individual that they are. Her practice is underpinned by an empathic and non-judgmental approach as she works alongside individuals in a gentle and caring manner. Jacqui is dedicated to working with people in achieving their goals; making sense of their life experiences and rewriting their life stories into something that has meaning and value. Jacqui works with a diverse range of clients, from all walks of life, including adults (any age), adolescents, new parents (postnatal distress), and immigrants. She has extensive experience in online counselling, digital mental health, working with young people, suicide, and bereavement and loss counselling.
Jacqui is passionate about helping others to fully engage in the possibilities of their lives and being witness to someoneโs transformation through the counselling process is both fulfilling and rewarding. She works in a non-judgmental way that allows her clients to be truly open to explore their situation and she believes that we are all able to solve our own problems and overcome our difficulties but at times we need help and support to achieve this. Jacqui considers herself to be flexible and open minded and she enjoys the process of challenging her own ideas and concepts about life.
MNZAC
Diploma in Counselling Supervision
Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling and Coaching
Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology)
Masters in Global Marketing
Monica Barnett-Harris
Monica has 18 years general counselling experience in 4 countries as well as having worked in corporate for a number of years. Special interest areas are Autism (ASD), Grief, Couples, 11-25 yrs, and Cross Cultural Issues. Using a Person-Centered or Integrative approach of counselling, Monica meets every client where they are in their journey by providing a safe confidential space to explore what the you bring to each session.
Self nurture and self kindness are an integral part of looking after yourself while we explore what it is that brings you to counselling. Monica will help you explore tools and techniques that meet your individual needs to help you between sessions and for personal navigation of future challenging situations.
