Government anti-violence initiatives stop and start: 'There is a lack of a cohesive plan'

10:15 am today

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Nine ministries are embarking on a second national anti-violence plan after the first multimillion-dollar plan delivered patchy results.

A ministerial report said the first plan was too big and unwieldy, a separate review found lots of gaps for victims, and an independent study said front-line agencies remained in a precarious position.

The Te Aorerekura plan was launched with fanfare by the government in December 2021, to put wheels under a 25-year strategy to stem violence.

Almost a billion dollars was spent on family violence initiatives from 2017 to 2023.

The first two year-long plan spent $73m in 2023.

What difference the first action plan made to the gaps is very much in question, various reports and papers released under the Official Information Act show.

The plan ended with just half of its 40 tasks completed, although its coordinating agency Te Puna Aonui said the other 20 tasks were ongoing, and it had laid the foundations.

"The first action plan served a role in testing how to deliver Te Aorerekura (the national strategy) most effectively," it told RNZ.

Te Puna Aonui is still reviewing how it went, 10 months after the plan ended last December.

On top of that, another review has just been done by the Social Investment Agency, and being considered for Budget 2025.

The government sees the second action plan as a key to a delivery plan for reducing violent crime that was discussed at a Cabinet strategy committee in July.

According to a review issued in April, the first plan had a lot of shortcomings, including:

Too few sexual violence crisis and support services for survivors long term
Not everyone could access a safe house
The support workers needed building up

At the front line, several anti-violence network sources told RNZ that their situation remained fraught. Service providers are often reluctant to be identified in media for fear of jeopardising their funding from the Ministry of Social Development.

The independent study of the front line echoed this, stating: "Overarchingly, there is a need for government to recognise and strengthen existing networks rather than continuing a cycle of layering new initiatives across the top of what is working well for local communities.

"Key informants, researchers and experts have been saying the same things for 20 years and yet recommendations aimed at strengthening networks have largely been ignored.

"This has been the biggest barrier to success."

According to the Official Information Act response, the first plan created measurement and monitoring frameworks, appointed national leaders and trainers, and improved "workforce capability frameworks in partnership with specialists and communities of interest".

However, a minister's report in May said the plan was too unwieldy, too prescriptive and that the nine ministries implementing it tripped over each other.

"The single agency ownership of actions in the first action plan perpetuated siloed working, which was reflected in in the duplication of work and weakened the cross-agency ownership of the delivery of the action plan as a whole," the Minister for Children and for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Karen Chhour told the other ministers in the action plan group.

The independent study of the front line, done for Te Puna Aonui in February, said layers of ineffective bureaucracy had been added, while workers struggled for funds as they had for years.

"There is a lack of a cohesive plan" and "funding for existing networks is extremely insecure", it said.

The Ministry of Social Development has not changed its funding approach: mid-year it once again rolled it over for a year. One worker told RNZ they left because they could never be sure they would be paid, from year to year.

Te Puna Aonui countered that "strengthening the networks was not a specific focus in the first action plan".

There had been "significant investment in improving workforce capability", it said.

It rated itself eight out of 10 for managing "relationships between government and the family violence and sexual violence sectors".

Second plan shorter, lasts longer

Chhour told ministers the second action plan would change tack, with just 10 tasks, and last five years, OIA reports showed.

The police, justice and social development ministers had discussed how to keep the plan "clear, simple, and the primary vehicle to cut through different intersecting strands of work", a report in August said.

Chhour's first focus was strengthening the "locally and regionally based multi-agency crisis response models already in place".

The needs were extensive, so the delivery programme would initially try to improve service.

Chhour said there would be limited consultation this time, because a common community view from the first plan was about "consultation fatigue", and front-line sources confirmed this to RNZ.

She told ministers the first plan had launched several national violence prevention campaigns, and created a "gaps plan" with recommendations on what to plug first.

That report, released in April, said there were lots of gaps, but also said, "The gaps report does not require any existing work or agreed priorities to change."

The gaps report did not cover reform of the family court, though front-line sources say this is fundamental.

Nine ministries are implementing the anti-violence plans.

Though Chhour's reports said "what has become clear, is that multi-agency approaches are not working how they were intended to", she backed the "joined-up approach" for plan two.

A counter-view at the front line was that Te Puna Aonui lacked authority to tell the various cash-strapped ministries what to do, which then did not prioritise the plan.

Health NZ had $2m to spend on preventing family and sexual violence through services for victims of non-fatal strangulation, but had spent zero by March this year.

Shortly after the first plan began, RNZ revealed Oranga Tamariki had badly mismanaged a $10m a year programme, which was meant to fund front-line help for sexually abused children, under the plan.

Oranga Tamariki's funding of child safety services as a whole is the subject of new inquiries by the Office of the Auditor-General, after mass disruptions to its contracts this year.