Frontline workers say some family and sexual violence policies have reduced or removed services and funding. File photo. Photo: 123rf
Nationwide efforts to combat family and sexual violence are not getting results, with government agencies blamed for poor access to services.
The government is launching a second action plan on Sunday, under the 25 year-long Te Aorerekura strategy.
But frontline workers say access to services remains poor after $70 million was spent on the first plan in the past three years.
A new government report quotes these workers, saying some policies have actually reduced or removed services and funding.
At the same time, levels of violence are going up on some fronts.
"There is evidence that sexual abuse of girls may have increased back to 2001 levels," says the new report.
Its findings feature a lot of negative feedback about how the first three years of Te Aorerekura - the 25-year "eliminating" violence strategy - has gone.
"While there was some positive feedback from non-government organisations and advisory groups, most feedback indicated there was poor access to services overall, and a lack of tailored services," it said.
Three of the six key goals of the strategy recorded a sizeable amount of negative feedback from workers on the front line.
The findings come as Minister for Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Karen Chhour prepares to launch the second action plan on Sunday.
The nine government agencies involved stand accused of not doing enough in the first three years, or actually still doing harm.
"Non-government organisations and advisory groups told Te Puna Aonui Business Unit that, while they recognise government organisations are trying to change their policies, some policies have reduced and removed services and funding, leading to resourcing issues for community providers," the report said
The frontline feedback repeatedly faulted the approach.
"Many felt as though their feedback was not actioned by government agencies, or they were left out of service design and were just told what to do by government agencies."
The new report showed overall rates of family or sexual violence were largely flat or rising.
"A previous decline in family violence may have slowed," said co-ordinating agency Te Puna Aonui.
A bright spot was a significant drop in teenagers experiencing violence at home - halving in two decades to 10 percent - crime data in the report showed.
A 'crooked' benchmark
Anti-violence advocate Deborah Mackenzie said they were hearing no evidence from survivors that anything had got better under the first plan.
Te Puna Aonui said the new report was the first of its kind and set a "baseline".
"We expected that it would highlight areas where more work is needed," it said.
But Mackenzie said that while her group - the Backbone Collective - had offered to help Te Puna Aonui gather evidence from women survivors for the new report, this did not happen.
"A first year of poor data that is not including victim-survivor input or experience, it makes a benchmark that is crooked, and it sets the whole multi-year measurement project up to fail," she said.
"If Te Puna Aonui were hearing what Backbone hears every week from many women victim-survivors who tell us about terrible responses from government agencies, that report definitely wouldn't look better. I imagine it would look a whole lot worse."
In a statement, Chhour told RNZ: "Of course I am concerned about negative outcomes from the first plan, that's why the second plan will have a sharper and clearer focus on where we can make the biggest difference for the victims of family violence and sexual violence.
"I have spent the last four years going up and down the country speaking to people who have themselves been victims of family and sexual violence. And being a survivor of harm myself, I am determined to improve these stats, that are our national shame."
Gaps in reporting
The report made clear a lot of its data was not thorough. One big gap was that the report did not talk to a single victim of violence, only to agencies, and referred to crime data and surveys aimed at gauging people's tolerance of violence. The lack of historical comparisons made it difficult to gauge if this was improving.
It noted a significant increase in sexual violence against four groups: Girls (28 percent reported experiencing being touched or made to do sexual things they did not want to do), Māori (25 percent), and disabled and LGBTTQIA+ people (32 percent).
But frontline feedback said government organisations "are not seen to be enabling tangata whenua and community-led family violence and sexual violence initiatives".
"Some communities feel as though their feedback isn't heard or actioned by government.
"There were inconsistencies in how initiatives were resourced and delivered, and communities are experiencing service gaps."
There were examples of good and bad practice, and training was reaching between 40-70 percent of support workers.
Sixty percent of NGO workers got on with regional agencies, but only 40 percent got on with national government offices.
The short report made it clear that the surveys and data behind its findings were, in many cases, weak or unrepresentative.
A data development plan to address that had "yet to be developed".
Chhour earlier said the first plan was too big and unwieldy, and set out to have far fewer targets under the second, five-year plan.
Te Puna Aonui said this year it had completed an assessment of the response system and work was underway "to strengthen the way people work together to respond to violence".
A campaign for action on family violence helped equip friends and family to respond to violence, it said.
New frameworks for adding to skills and safety would be added next year.
But Mackenzie said they had not heard from any women that government agencies were responding any better than before Te Aorerekura was launched in 2021.
Te Puna Aonui said plugging gaps in the data was essential.
It was "building new ways to gather victim-survivor voices to ensure these are safe and ethical", it said.
It could not simply draw on existing surveys. "More work is required to ensure data is robust."
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