Proposed family violence cross-agency work plan 2014/15 released by Government

The Government has publicly released its proposed 2014/15 cross-agency work programme to strengthen the family violence system. This is part of a Cabinet paper Family violence: Achieving intergenerational change by Associate Minister for Social Development Tariana Turia.

The ten broad action areas in the proposed work programme are:

• "Mobilise and support communities
• Strengthen support for young people's healthy relationships
• Develop a cross-agency research and evaluation agenda
• Raise awareness and change attitudes and behaviours towards family violence
• Develop an integrated approach to early interventions for alcohol and other drug (AOD) addiction and family violence
• Improve family violence sector workforce development and training
• Develop a standardised risk assessment framework
• Better utilise multi-agency resources to improve the response to family violence
• Review the delivery and funding of non-violence programmes 
• Strengthen the Justice Sector's response to domestic violence."

Further detail and the relevant government agencies are available in the paper. The paper includes recommendations to the Cabinet Social Policy Committee (SOC) to:

• "invite Ministers with responsibility for actions in the proposed 2014/15 work programme to provide a progress report to the Family Violence Ministerial Group in November 2014.
• invite the Minister for Social Development in consultation with members of the Family Violence Ministerial Group to report to SOC with a comprehensive and whole-of-government approach, Achieving lntergenerational Change, in December 2014.
• invite the Minister for Social Development to review current family violence governance arrangements in consultation with relevant agencies and non-government organisations and to report back to SOC with a governance proposal in December 2014.
• invite the Minister for Social Development in consultation with members of the Family Violence Ministerial Group to report back to SOC further detailed work to address the Cabinet Strategy Committee recommendations [STR Min (14) 1/1] in December 2014."

The paper also includes a breakdown of total government contracted (NGO) spend on family violence in 2012/13, a total of $67.675 million.

Three other Cabinet papers were released at the same time:

•  A stronger response to family violence by Justice Minister Judith Collins. This provides background and further information on the family violence Justice sector measures announced in July 2014 (see below).
• Progressing the Sentencing (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill by Corrections Minister Anne Tolley. This proposes legislative changes to enable GPS monitoring of high risk offenders who have been sentenced to intensive supervision or released on conditions following a short term sentence of imprisonment. This would include family violence offenders who pose a "very high and serious risk" to their victims.
• Government response to the report of the expert advisory group on family violence by Associate Minister for Social Development Tariana Turia. See also previous NZFVC news story, Government releases Expert Advisory Group report and its response (July 2014).

All papers are available from the Ministry of Justice website.

For background information, see previous NZFVC news story Government announces "suite of initiatives" to address family violence (July 2014).