Government funding Whānau Resilience services

The Government has announced they are investing $15.379 million from Budget 2018 to fund ‘Whānau Resilience services’.

Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said the funding investment is in response to feedback from the family violence sector saying that "... short funding periods result in reactive and crisis focused support for families."

Over the last few months the Government has been consulting with family violence providers about the family violence funding model. The November 2018 Family and sexual violence service provider update from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) said:

"Through this engagement you told us most of MSD’s funding to family violence service providers ends up being directed to crisis support, because of the overwhelming demand for these services. This leads to people only being able to access crisis support and does not enable service providers to work with families and whānau to break the intergenerational cycle of violence. If we want to provide people with meaningful opportunities to heal from trauma and violence, and break patterns and cycles of abuse, then we need to invest in services that support individuals to make changes to prevent future family violence from reoccurring."

The update went on to say the focus of the funding for the Whānau Resilience services is on "... providing long-term healing and recovery services to individuals, families, whānau and communities affected by family violence."

It also said "Whānau Resilience responses will:

• be designed to be longer than 12 weeks and up to three years, so whānau can access support when needed
• be whānau-centred
• focus on building protective factors
• support families and whānau to sustain violence-free lives."

The Ministry of Social Development is holding workshops to discuss the details with providers - dates available at the link. For more information and to register, email Family_Violence_CPP@msd.govt.nz.

Additional updates

The MSD Family Violence Service provider update also includes information on:

• Results from the survey about family violence funding (also see the MSD website for documents summarising key themes from the survey findings)
• Early results from the court support pilot that provides psycho-social support for survivors of sexual violence going through the criminal justice system
• 'Safe to talk - Kōrero mai, ka ora' dashboard, which provides summary statistics of who and why people contact the helpline
• Sexual violence sector working group formed to look at supports for the sexual violence sector
• Kaupapa Māori harmful sexual behaviour service pilot
• Have your say on Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy (see our story on the consultation)
• New website to help navigate porn landscape.

Related news

The Ministry of Justice has released two Cabinet papers and associated documents (scroll to bottom of page): Breaking the inter-generational cycle of family violence and sexual violence and Leadership of Government's collective efforts to reduce family violence and sexual violence. These include a number of related documents that provide background information and outline proposals to address and coordinate family and sexual violence nationally. This includes the development of a national action plan and strategy; dedicated agent to coordinate family and sexual violence work; the joint venture model; and advisory groups.

The Government has announced a new "joint venture" approach to addressing family and sexual violence. The joint venture’s role is to "lead, integrate, and provide support for everyone to ensure an effective whole-of-government response to family violence and sexual violence."

Two significant family violence bills have passed through Parliament and will become law: the Family Violence Bill and the Family Violence (Amendments) Bill.