Who will make it on to the New Year Honours List this year?
Video / NZ Herald
Jenny Saywood
Queen’s Service Medal for services to restorative justice and women
Whanganui’s Jenny Saywood has been recognised for services to restorative justice and women with a Queen’s Service Medal (QSM) in the New Year Honours.
Saywood was a founding member of Restorative Justice in Whanganui in 1999 and has chaired Restorative City Whanganui Trust since 2012.
The trust is a provider of a court-referred restorative justice programme and has advocated for victim-centric and te ao Māori approaches.
In 2012 Saywood led a team to engage with local organisations, businesses and schools to provide training on how to implement restorative practices within their organisations.
“It has been very rewarding to see restorative practices adopted in Whanganui,” Saywood said.
”The practice had been very effective in the court system and helping to extend it into the community where it has become part of people’s everyday lives has been very satisfying work for me.
”Saywood said her first profession was early childhood teaching before heading overseas where she spent a decade travelling and living in England.
After working in hospitality and administrative roles, she retrained and became a probation officer in Chelmsford, Essex.
She later moved to Norfolk with her English husband.
”We ran out of fuel for the fire one very cold winter and my English husband agreed that New Zealand would be a better place to live.”
After settling in Whanganui, Saywood joined the St Johns Hill School board where her children attended and started the first Neighbourhood Watch group in the suburb in the 1980s.
She was employed with the Department of Corrections from 1991 to 2015 and championed better reintegration pathways and a whole-of whānau approach.
Saywood was justice reference group leader for the Safer Whanganui steering group until 2023, advocating for safe reintegration of prisoners in the community and issues of family harm and violence against women.
Jenny Saywood has been recognised in the New Year Honours for her work in introducing restorative justice practices to Whanganui.
She has been president of the National Council of Women, Whanganui branch since 2006.
She has been a trustee of Claw, Whanganui’s Community Law service, since 2015.
She is a trustee of Whanganui Welfare Guardian Trust and was a trustee of the Family Support Services Whanganui Trust (now Jigsaw) in the mid-2000s.
