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Pacific perspectives on family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand (PDF, 425  KB)

Pacific perspectives on family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand (Word DOCX,  478 KB)

Key Messages

• Pacific peoples experience significant rates of family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand.
• ‘Mainstream’ family violence initiatives and programmes are not usually effective for Pacific peoples. Using Western tools and ideologies for interventions is not ideal for addressing issues of family violence for Pacific families and communities, given the differences between common Pacific perceptions and meanings around issues of violence.
• There is a need to accommodate Pacific worldviews in order to deliver meaning and information around violence into policies, funding allocation, and strategies developed by the government. Funding criteria should allow each provider to develop a service that reflect their organisation’s philosophical base, incorporating the Pacific cultural norms and culture within which it works.
• Bridging the gaps between micro and macro practices will have a higher possibility of achieving effective outcomes for family violence among Pacific families.
• Accountability and monitoring outcomes of current policies and funding allocation needs to be more transparent.
• Interventions and therapies for Pacific communities that acknowledge cultural diversity should be used where appropriate. ‘One size fits all’ provides limited ability to consider the diversity of Pacific families' cultural backgrounds, paths to violence, and required interventions. Family violence is complex, which requires practitioners to match interventions to a wide range of people and different types of family structures.
• Holistic approaches to intervention and prevention for Pacific communities need to be utilised in addressing the complexities of cultural, communal, and church issues when working with survivors of violent abuse and perpetrators of violence.
• Currently, access to culturally safe therapy is limited. Selected therapists, many who are not trained to work with Pacific communities, are appointed as part of many funded initiatives and programmes targeting violence.
• ‘Family’ in Pacific culture is central to people’s being. Therefore, individuals usually identify themselves within the context and relational connection to their families or communities. Working from a holistic approach means working with the whole Pacific family to address and prevent family violence and monitor the progress after the intervention.

Authors

Fuafiva Fa'alau, PhD¹ and Sharyn Wilson, BCouns, MNZCCA²  

¹ Lecturer, Pacific Health, School of Population Health, University of Auckland; Director, Sea of Islands Services

² Independent practitioner; Cultural advisor; Director, Soul Talk Auckland

Fa'alau, F., & Wilson, S. (2020). Pacific perspectives on family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand. Issues Paper 16. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of Auckland.

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ISSN: 2253-3222, published online only.

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Historical trauma and whānau violence (PDF, 459 KB)

Historical trauma and whānau violence (Word DOCX, 353 KB)

Key Messages

• Prior to colonisation Māori people lived within whānau, hapū and iwi collectives that supported wellbeing, with whānau as the primary source of support within Māori society
• Traditional knowledge forms within tikanga, te reo and mātauranga Māori provide clear guidance for wellbeing and appropriate behaviours within relationships.
• It is well documented that acts of whānau violence were not accepted by our ancestors.
• Central to the colonisation of Aotearoa (New Zealand) is the dispossession of land and resources of whānau, hapū and iwi.
• The position, and wellbeing of Māori women and children is central to ensuring the wellbeing of whānau.
• In Aotearoa, colonisation is characterised by extensive acts of violence upon Māori.
• Colonial ideologies and practices of gender, race and class that have been imported to Aotearoa have impacted significantly in the undermining of Māori structures, beliefs and ways of living.
• Colonisation is both a series of events and an ongoing system of oppression that has disrupted may aspects of Māori social structures and ways of being.
• Understanding both the impact of colonisation and Historical trauma is critical to understanding the origins of family violence in Aotearoa.
• Historical trauma relates to the collective trauma experienced through “massive cataclysmic” historical events that have been perpetrated intentionally by one group of people upon another.
• Historical trauma is perpetrated through deliberate and intentional acts of violence and oppression upon one group of people by another group of people.
• Historical trauma can be viewed as a ‘soul wound,’ which sits at the core of generations of Indigenous suffering.
• Māori views of whānau violence recognise the need for political, cultural and spiritual understandings and explanations.
• A range of Māori concepts such as ‘patu ngākau’, ‘pouri’ and ‘mamae’ provide understandings of trauma and its impact upon Māori.
• Healing must take place on both individual and collective levels to prevent intergenerational transmission of trauma.
• Māori healing must be based on the restoration of the Māori cultural and healing paradigms that colonisation sought to destroy.
• Kaupapa Māori approaches to trauma and healing must be defined, controlled and undertaken by Māori for Māori.

Webinar

We also hosted author Professor Leonie Pihama to present a webinar on this topic on Thursday 31 October 2019.

Authors

Leonie Pihama¹, Ngaropi Cameron² and Rihi Te Nana³

¹ Director, Māori And Indigenous Analysis Ltd

² CEO, Tū Tama Wahine o Taranaki Inc

³ Director, Kakariki Consulting Ltd

Pihama, L., Cameron, N., & Te Nana, R. (2019). Historical trauma and whānau violence. Issues Paper 15. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of Auckland.

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ISSN: 2253-3222, published online only.

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Ethnic perspectives on family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand (PDF, 1.14 MB)

Ethnic perspectives on family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand (Word DOCX, 1.11 MB)

Key Messages

• Violence directed against women in ethnic and migrant communities is prevalent across different age, sexuality and identity groups, but is under-reported.
• While there are similarities between violence against ethnic and non-ethnic women, violence in ethnic communities can take particular cultural forms, have distinct profiles of presentation, and arise from a specific constellation of risk factors.
• Risk factors for interpersonal violence against ethnic women are layered and encompass individual (e.g., language barriers, isolation), household (e.g., migration factors, employment conditions), community (gender norms, patriarchal values), and systemic (racism, colonisation, capitalist structures) factors.
• Help-seeking behaviours, along with reporting, are relatively infrequent in ethnic communities. In part, this silence may reflect shame and fear of the stigma from and towards their communities that may be associated with disclosing violence. Low levels of help-seeking may also reflect the limited formal and informal avenues available to ethnic and migrant women where they can safely disclose their experiences.
• Current interventions for violence against ethnic and migrant women take varied forms. Community-based specialist services alongside responsive ‘mainstream’ services have the potential to form an effective integrated intervention approach to addressing impacts of violence. Increasingly, there is recognition that services cannot be ‘one size fits all’ across ethnic and non-ethnic communities. Specific culturally-sensitive approaches and techniques need to be utilised to address the unique profiles of violence against ethnic and migrant women.

Author

Rachel Simon-Kumar¹, PhD

¹ Associate Professor, Social & Community Health, School of Population Health, University of Auckland

Simon-Kumar, R. (2019). Ethnic perspectives on family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand. Issues Paper 14. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of Auckland.

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ISSN: 2253-3222, published online only.

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Using systems thinking to address intimate partner violence and child abuse in New Zealand (PDF, 1.15 MB)

Using systems thinking to address intimate partner violence and child abuse in New Zealand (Word DOCX, 2.38 MB)

Key Messages

• Systems thinking is recommended to address intimate partner violence (IPV) and child abuse and neglect (CAN) in New Zealand.
• Systems thinking is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of ideas, methods and tools that focus on understanding system behaviour, emphasising the contextual nature of the problems we try to solve. It aims to affect transformational systemic change that is both sympathetic to existing needs and disruptive in terms of making changes aimed at positive outcomes.
  • Systems analysis helps build a collective understanding of the parts, and relationships between the parts, which leads to a view of the whole.
  • System designers often talk of bringing the whole system “into one room” since the capacity to understand and explore the issue are spread across the system.
  • The experiences of people directly impacted by a system play a critical part in understanding the system and in the design, implementation and review of any change process.
  • Systems tend to pivot around leverage points: places in the system that have a significant impact on system behaviours. These leverage points need to become the focus of interventions, targeting scarce resources where they will have the most effect in reducing the incidence and improving the response to IPV and CAN. Systems analysis also informs theories of change and helps identify measures and indicators.
• Using systems thinking to address IPV and CAN requires transformational change and an enabling framework. This includes:
  • Government leadership and a strategic intent
  • Early and sustained collaboration across the system and integrated government and ccommunity level efforts
  • Infrastructure and processes to link and enable the various parts of the prevention and response system to work together
  • Effective stewardship including oversight, monitoring of outcomes and acting on shared learnings
  • A framework for measurement, monitoring and evaluation for the purpose of learning.

Authors

Sarah Carne¹, PhD, David Rees², PhD, Nicola Paton³ and Janet Fanslow⁴ PhD

¹ Independent researcher
² Synergia Ltd
³ Manager/Community Lead, New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse
⁴ Associate Professor, Social & Community Health, School of Population Health, University of Auckland; Co-Director, New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse

Carne, S., Rees, D., Paton, N., & Fanslow, J. (2019). Using systems thinking to address intimate partner violence and child abuse in New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of Auckland.

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ISSN: 2253-3222, published online only.

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Preventing adolescent relationship abuse and promoting healthy relationships (PDF, 359 KB)

Preventing adolescent relationship abuse and promoting healthy relationships (Word DOCX, 365 KB)

Key messages

• Violence and abuse in adolescent relationships are serious problems in New Zealand and internationally. These issues do not receive the same level of attention as violence in adult relationships. Adolescence is a key time to intervene and to support young people to build healthy relationship skills.
• Psychological and emotional abuse are the most common forms of violence. These are sometimes left out of intervention and prevention programmes. More focus on issues of power and control, including emotional and psychological abuse are warranted.
• Gender transformative approaches that challenge dominant gender norms are key to successful prevention programmes.
• International evidence about successful and unsuccessful programmes is available and should be used to guide development and implementation of prevention and intervention strategies. Indigenous programmes also need to be developed that are grounded in Te Ao Māori.
• Intervention and prevention programmes must be developed in collaboration with members of communities within which the programmes are implemented, including ethnic minority and LGBTIQ communities.  Successful programmes engage with community members and understand their needs and perspectives.
• Well-trained and skilled facilitators are just as important as programme content. Strong and knowledgeable facilitators are needed to be able to work from an evidence-base, and still tailor the work they do to the different groups they work with. Workforce capacity building is needed to grow and support more people to develop these skills.
• School-based curricula are important, but it is also important to think more broadly about developing community-based programmes.

Author

Melanie Beres¹, PhD

¹ Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Otago

Beres, M. (2017). Preventing adolescent relationship abuse and promoting healthy relationships. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of Auckland.

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ISSN: 2253-3222, published online only.

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Responding to perpetrators of family violence (PDF, 415 KB)

Responding to perpetrators of family violence (Word DOCX, 391 KB)

Key messages

Integrated response systems offer the most promise for responding to family violence in New Zealand. Integrated systems:

• Are built from the perspective of system users, not individual service providers
• Include crisis services but also continue to provide support until change is firmly established
• Include response subsystems that cater for perpetrators, but also victims and families
• More New Zealand research is needed before any redesign proceeds, because good design requires knowledge about service users, and about current responses that is lacking
• Our communities hold expertise that is important to harness in any redesign. More researcher-practitioner collaboration should be built into any ongoing research and evaluation, because evidence-based practice is a process, not an outcome. Victims and victim advocates also hold expertise that is valuable to this research.

An integrated perpetrator response system includes co-ordination between crisis response and immediate containment, criminal and civil court proceedings, sentence or order compliance, risk monitoring and behaviour change components, and provides services based on risk and need. Necessary components include:

• “Best practice” risk assessment and reassessment processes that are used consistently with findings well documented
• Providing more dangerous perpetrators more oversight and assistance than less dangerous cases
• Prompt detection of increases in risk status, with a corresponding change in response
• Providing case managers for those with high and complex needs (e.g., mental health, alcohol and other drugs, housing) who co-ordinate and monitor planned responses.

These response systems offer more opportunities to hold perpetrators to account, and in turn, better account to victims for their efforts in keeping them safe. New Zealand currently has no such system, and integrated systems are difficult to build and challenging to make work. Developing a system like this in New Zealand will require a significant investment in funding and the development of the necessary human resources. Current responses are piecemeal and insufficient, and mired in a complex web of bureaucracy.

• Four government departments provide funding for short term perpetrator non-violence programmes in the community
• More work is needed to develop better risk assessment and risk management practices across different parts of the system
• Behaviour change-oriented programmes are relatively short with limited scope for tailoring to the heterogeneity of perpetrators
• Level and type of service is based on referral pathway rather than risk or need
• Self-referrals are growing, but most are unfunded
• Methods for engagement with victims and families for safety monitoring are still developing
• There is a lack of recognition in service provision models that contact between perpetrators, victims and families often continues or resumes after a specific episode
• A sustained programme of public education similar to road safety campaigns is needed “at the top of the cliff”, to increase the impact of these “bottom of the cliff” efforts.

Author

Devon L. L. Polaschek¹, PhD, DipClinPsyc

¹ Clinical psychologist and professor of criminal justice psychology, Victoria University of Wellington

Polaschek, D. (2016). Responding to perpetrators of family violence. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of Auckland.

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ISSN: 2253-3222, published online only.

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Understanding research on risk and protective factors for intimate partner violence (PDF, 1.9 MB)

Understanding research on risk and protective factors for intimate partner violence (Word DOC, 3.3 MB)

Key messages

• Conceptual models guide the exploration of risk and protective factors.
  • Conceptual models help us to organise our thoughts and identify relationships between the different risk and protective factors for intimate partner violence, and other forms of violence.
  • Some conceptual models (such as the ecological model) have helped to expand our understanding of the wider societal and community factors that impact on violence experience.
  • Consistent findings at the international level have allowed the identification of a common set of factors that are strongly associated with violence experience, but these are not the only factors that influence the likelihood of violence occurring.
• There are some challenges involved with measuring some risk or protective factors
  • Most of the research identifying risk and protective factors for intimate partner violence collect information at only one point in time. The result is that it is difficult to establish whether factors that are related to violence experience caused the violence or are a result of experiencing the violence (or both).
  • While, the use of controlling behaviours is strongly associated with violence experience, behaviours can mean different things to different people. It is important to understand the context of an abuser’s behaviour in order to fully understanding the meaning.
• There is no “one true cause” of intimate partner violence.
  • Violence is typically the outcome of the interaction of many different factors.
  • Individual, relationship, community, social and cultural factors work together to enhance or reduce the likelihood of violence being perpetrated or experienced.
  • Violence is a behaviour which is governed by choice. Decisions and subsequent actions are influenced by societal attitudes about what is considered acceptable behaviour.
• A comprehensive, multi-pronged approach is required to address intimate partner violence as well as other forms of family violence in New Zealand.
  • Lessons can be learned from systematic approaches to addressing other problem behaviour patterns. For example, addressing the road toll required:
    • Investment in infrastructure
    • Legislation to reduce risk
    • Social marketing campaigns
    • Improvements in safety design
    • Swift and sure punishment where laws were broken
    • Increased resourcing at high risk periods
    • Consistent and adequate funding over a sustained period of time
• To optimise the likelihood of success a long-term investment in policy, infrastructure and communities is required. This needs to be supported by an overall strategic government framework for addressing IPV.

Authors

Pauline Gulliver¹, PhD and Janet Fanslow², PhD

¹ Research Fellow, School of Population Health, University of Auckland

² Associate Professor, Social and Community Health, School of Population Health, University of Auckland; Co-Director, New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse

Gulliver, P., & Fanslow, J. (2016). Understanding research on risk and protective factors for intimate partner violence. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of Auckland.

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ISSN: 2253-3222, published online only.

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Risk assessment: What is it and how can it be applied in family violence? (PDF, 377.33 KB)

Risk assessment: What is it and how can it be applied in family violence? (Word DOC, 882.5 KB)

Key messages

• Risk assessment must be considered as a piece in the wider puzzle of risk management.
• Adequate services need to be provided for those considered at “less” risk, so they receive an appropriate response. This also reduces the imperative for service providers to escalate a case, in order to get help for a person.
• Effective risk assessment and management needs to be grounded in an integrated response system. This needs to have:
  - Underlying principles which shape how practitioners respond.
  - Training for practitioners in the effective conduct of risk assessment and the effective communication of results.
  - Appropriate risk assessment tools should be selected, with monitoring to ensure they are used as intended and that they support risk management decision making.
  - Clarity of roles and responsibilities for all components of the system.
• Co-location of professionals for risk management appears very beneficial to facilitate adequate communication. Co-location:
  - Enhances the development of a unique culture which supports increased trust and information sharing between professionals from different agencies.
  - Facilitates the process of risk management planning by reducing turnaround times and enhancing access to services.
  - Where effective colocation is not achievable, clear roles, responsibilities, communication strategies and a common culture around family violence must be developed to ensure a consistent response is provided.
• Effective communication of risk, using common language, is vital to ensure all professionals understand how an estimation of risk was derived.
  - Training is required across government agencies to ensure there is a consistent understanding of family violence – including understanding definitions and patterns of violence.
  - To develop a common language, training should be shared across government agencies, rather than being delivered within agencies.
• Effective risk management requires a lead agency to take responsibility for the implementation of planned activities. This lead agency also needs to be tasked with the responsibility of regularly reviewing risk in light of developments.
  - Agencies need to be aware of each other’s roles and responsibilities within the risk management system.
  - Where limitations exist within the family violence risk management system, external resourcing may be required to ensure all risks are effectively addressed.

Authors

Pauline Gulliver¹, PhD and Janet Fanslow², PhD

¹ Research Fellow, New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse

² Associate Professor, Social and Community Health, School of Population Health, University of Auckland; Co-Director, New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse

Gulliver, P., & Fanslow, J. (2015). Risk assessment: What is it and how can it be applied in family violence? Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of Auckland.

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ISSN: 2253-3222, published online only.

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