Jane Weekes is a qualified counsellor with experience supporting people through grief and loss, problems with drugs and alcohol, postnatal depression and anxiety, and with young women in a school guidance counselling setting. In addition to bespoke one-on-one support, Jane also provides specialist counselling training and facilitation to individuals and organisations looking to develop their own counselling knowledge and provision.

In 2012 Jane’s two-year-old triplets were killed in a fire whilst living in Qatar in the Middle East. Since surviving this unthinkable tragedy she completed a Bachelors of Counselling degree from the Wellington Institute of Technology (WelTec) and in 2016 was named most outstanding student of her graduating class. In 2019 she went on to complete a Postgraduate Diploma in Violence and Trauma Studies at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and is currently working towards a Master of Organisational Psychology with the University of Canterbury.

Since graduation she has also worked to support families after the death of a child or loved one. Grief, bereavement and loss are unsurprisingly areas Jane has a particular empathy with and she has an incredible ability to offer hope at times it can seem all hope is lost.

In 2018 Jane was invited to speak in a nationwide series of workshop’s run by Vicki Culling Associates to help professionals such as counsellors, social workers, psychologists, midwives, nurses and funeral directors in working with families after the loss of a child or children which encouraged her to return to the world of training and facilitation. Jane has subsequently worked with Fire and emergency New Zealand, Heart Kids and Starship Children’s Hospital Paediatric Intensive care providing insight and training to their teams in working with bereavement.

Jane’s prior roles with organisations such as Interislander and Qatar Airways developing and delivering customer service, sales and personal development training workshops means she has a unique ability to coach a wide range of professionals and volunteers in how to best support people at times of trauma and grief from both a personal and research based perspective.

Based in Auckland, Jane works with individuals and organisations across New Zealand and internationally.