Press Release - Million Dollar Family Violence Contract for UC

The University of Canterbury's Te Awatea Violence Research Centre and Information Technology Services have won a Ministry of Social Development contract worth more than a million dollars to spearhead the establishment of a national centre for collating and sharing information on family violence.

The New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse will provide resources for people working to eliminate violence within families.

It will make objective, quality information available to help maximise the effectiveness of prevention strategies.
The Clearinghouse will collect, collate and distribute family violence research and other information from a variety of sources, such as academic researchers, government departments and non-governmental organisations.

It is intended that the work of the Clearinghouse will help increase awareness and understanding of the dynamics of family violence and how it can be prevented.

The Clearinghouse is being developed by a consortium of organisations which combines academic interests and tertiary training with the knowledge and experience of government and non-government organisations.

NGO consortium partners include Child Abuse Prevention Services (NZ) Inc, National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges Inc and Te Kupenga Whakaoti Mahi Patunga/The National Network Stopping Violence Services Inc.

The establishment of the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse has emerged from the Government’s "Te Rito New Zealand Family Violence Prevention Strategy", which highlights the need for centralising information on family violence.

The Ministry of Social Development believes access to quality information is critical to ensure maximum effectiveness of family violence prevention strategies and initiatives.

Te Awatea Director, Dr Kate van Heugten, says the centre is well placed to become involved in the clearinghouse project.

"The research centre has always had a vision. Its vision has been to be a centre that disseminates information to academics, to the public and to practitioners. In a sense much like a clearinghouse.

"I think there has been a gradual movement over time to become more consistent in terms of collecting information and to have information more centrally accessible and because we’re in the electronic age it is also something which has become much more possible now.

"Inevitably if knowledge is not collected centrally it is likely there has been an amount of duplication. There may be research sitting on shelves that we may not be aware of. That's part of the vision of the clearinghouse, to give researchers and practitioners greater access to work which has already been done so they can put it to good use and build on it."