RFP to fill gaps in acute crisis sexual violence services

The Government has announced a Request for Proposals (RFP) will be put out to fill identified gaps in coverage of acute crisis sexual violence services.

In 2014, the Government announced a funding boost of $10.4 million over two years to stablise sexual violence services. The announcement preceded the outcome of a Social Services Select Committee inquiry into the funding of specialist sexual violence services.

The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has reported the majority of the funding has been allocated to support existing specialist sexual violence services, harmful sexual behaviour treatment services, services for male survivors of sexual abuse, and medical/forensic services.

Now, approximately $1.5 million is available to fill identified gaps in the coverage of acute crisis sexual violence services to support survivors of sexual violence during and immediately following a crisis. It does not aim to fill all service gaps but rather the "largest and most urgent and those readily able to be filled by existing capable and competent providers."

In general the funding will be for existing specialist sexual violence service providers (individually or in collaboration with other social service providers) and, in geographic areas where there are no existing specialist sexual violence service providers, family violence providers.

MSD is particularly interested in "considered and creative approaches that involve collaboration, and have a clear plan for a smooth transition to longer-term support services for victims/survivors."

The RFP will be available on the Government Electronic Tenders (GETS) website.

For more information visit the Ministry of Social Development website.

Update

The RFP was published on GETS on 26 January 2015. The closing date is 6 March 2015.

The closing date for questions is 13 February 2015, 12 noon.

MSD invites proposals from "existing specialist sexual violence service providers, either individually or in collaboration with other organisations. In geographic areas where there are no sexual violence service providers, we invite proposals from organisations who can demonstrate safe and high quality responses to victim/survivors of sexual violence during and immediately following a crisis."

The funding available is approximately $3 million, to purchase services until 30 June 2016.

Media

Budget 2014: Sexual violence services get funding boost, Beehive, 30.04.2014

Image: Water Drop by Allan Foster. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)