Covering the cost of domestic abuse

You don’t need a reason to want to stop domestic abuse, even if you haven’t experienced it yourself.

 

With the victims often children, who sometimes go onto commit the same violence against their own families decades later, it’s an issue that goes beyond party lines, past politics. It's also expensive.

A report [pdf] released earlier this month puts the cost of child abuse and violence between partners to the national economy as up to $7 billion a year. That’s taking into account, among other expenses, the costs of healthcare and social services, benefit payments, ACC compensation, and the loss of tax revenue and workplace productivity. And researchers say not only is that estimate conservative, it’s rising.

Project director and economist Suzanne Snively told Kathryn Ryan on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon that if nothing is done to address the problem of family violence, the financial and economic burden could grow to nearly $80 billion in a decade. By way of Snively’s comparison, that’s 60 per cent of New Zealand’s total dairy export earnings last year.

LISTEN to the full interview with Suzanne Snively on Nine to Noon:

Measuring the Economic Costs of Child Abuse and Intimate Partner Violence to New Zealand was commissioned by the Glenn Inquiry, set up in late 2012 with $2 million in funding from the millionaire businessman Sir Owen Glenn to address the problem of domestic violence.

In June, it released the People’s Report, summarising the experiences of about 500 victims of abuse, frontline workers and offenders who told their stories to the inquiry. Its most recent release last week made the connection between abuse and alcohol and drug use.

The findings on the economic impact of family violence attracted more media attention than any of its other releases. The New Zealand Herald criticised the $7 billion figure as inflated and described it as “the latest of a series of misfortunes that have dogged the inquiry”, referring to the resignation of founding director Ruth Herbert last year and the abuse charge lodged against Sir Glenn.

Snively defended the robustness of the report – but it wasn’t lost, on victims of domestic abuse in particular, that the real impact and cost of the issue cannot be tallied in dollars and cents.

New Zealand has an alarming record of child abuse and domestic violence. On average 14 women, seven men and eight children are killed by a family member every year; police respond to a family violence-related call every seven minutes.

READ: Victoria Crockford’s account of how her father broke the cycle of abuse in which he grew up.

The picture is grim even without knowing the full extent of the problem. Wellington student Sherilee Kahui, 29, who co-authored the report with Snively, says under-reporting is so common that only 13 per cent of abuse is thought to be taken to authorities. For every Nia Glassie, Chris and Cru Kahui and Sophie Elliott horror story we hear of, there are hundreds more that we don’t. “If under-reporting is that bad, many of the cost categories will be a whole lot higher – we just don’t know about it.”

Kahui was struck by how “nothing has really changed, and certainly not for the better”, since Snively’s last costing of family violence 10 years ago. “I think, historically, and not just in New Zealand, governments tend to look at Band-Aid fixes … but what we see in the news when someone’s been killed is just the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “If we don’t start addressing all of those causes, those situations are going to keep happening again and again.”

Putting a dollar figure on human life feels “a bit gross”, she agrees – but says confronting the economic costs of family violence is just one strand of the Glenn Inquiry, and it helps to highlight how it’s the entire country’s problem. “Once you put a dollar value to something, people tend to take notice of it – it becomes something that’s not just affecting victims and perpetrators, but society as a whole. Hopefully [we] can start taking responsibility for that.”

But when an issue has such a tangible, tragic impact on people’s lives, framing it in economic terms does seem callous at best. Kiwiblog’s David Farrar, responding to Snively and Kahui’s report, admitted to being “not very interested” in the economic cost of domestic violence: “It is the personal cost to those involved which is terrible”.

A 26-year-old Auckland journalist, who wrote for The Wireless about the physical and emotional abuse inflicted on him by his mother when he was growing up, believes the economic impact of the issue is somewhat besides the point. “I think it’s a shame that victims continue to be categorised as numbers in a system, and while I can understand the need for tallying a financial cost, everyone knows that economics related to political issues are very quickly twisted and manipulated by those for and against,” he said.

If there’s general consensus that New Zealand has a family violence problem, the question becomes what can be done about it – and that does depend on funding

He pointed out that the People’s Report, which aimed to highlight failures of the system through sharing victims’ experiences of it, “got nowhere near as much attention” as the costing. “I’d call it a massive disappointment … Distracting from the real issue to focus on a side issue isn’t fair on us … Look at what is happening here, everyone is focusing on the figure instead of the actual problem, which is that New Zealand has a huge rate of child abuse and domestic violence.”

He speculated that, of the costs taken into account by Kahui and Snively for the report, child abuse would be among the smaller.

 

WATCH: This television commercial, from the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, reminds the journalist of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother growing up. “It makes me bawl like a baby any time I watch it because it is exactly what I went through.”

But if there’s general consensus that New Zealand has a problem, the question becomes what can be done about it – and that does depend on funding.

Kahui points out that the Glenn Inquiry aims to create a “blueprint for change”, with recommendations of the most effective solutions to address child abuse and domestic violence. “And those changes are all going to cost money – a lot of money.” She hopes the findings of the report will help to convince those who are in a position to effect its recommendations that it’s worthwhile from an economic point of view, with an eventual payoff in increased productivity.

On Nine to Noon, Snively suggested that the issue be addressed in the same way as anti-smoking and road toll campaigns, two matters of life and death that affect the economy and have been fairly effectively curtailed by government investment and a targeted, well-resourced approach. She pointed out that policymakers put a dollar figure to human lives all the time.

READ: How the ‘Value of Statistical Life’ measure is used in road planning.

But the journalist was sceptical of the potential to address the problem through funding alone. He testified to the Glenn Inquiry about how the system had let him down, first in failing to remove him from the situation (at the ages of four, 12 and 13 he was taken out of his mother’s case; every time, he was returned to her) and then to provide him with affordable support as an adult.

He said that while more funding to frontline services would allow them to deliver more aftercare and support, there needed to be legislative change. In particular he believes Child, Youth and Family needs greater powers to enforce the outcomes of family group conferences, and the mandate to take a child from their parents if that’s what’s necessary: “CYFS is required to try and keep the child within the family, but this can just prolong the problem,” he said. “Greater cooperation between police, hospitals, teachers and CYFs would help as well.”

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Part of that is already underway as part of the Government’s Children’s Action Plan [pdf], which has 30 specific measures designed to prevent abuse and neglect and passed into law earlier this year with the Vulnerable Children Act.

But Snively said on Nine to Noon most government spending on the issue thus far has been on responding to “symptoms” of domestic violence – the ‘ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’ approach. Kahui says investment in preventative solutions, such as those spearheaded by the police, Women's Refuge, Shine, the Auckland Council and even CYF, can only go so far when those organisations are so stretched for resources. “Only a small proportion of victims and perpetrators are receiving the support they need, and even then ... the solution needs many years and holistic care.”

But steps towards permanent institutional change are difficult to identify, let alone enforce. Family violence is by no means the only issue in need of a long-term strategy for the same reason: climate change, the cost of superannuation, and rape culture are often cited as lacking leadership, to the detriment of future generations.

But, Kahui says, if the Glenn Inquiry has looked at the impact of domestic violence and child abuse from every angle and found that it should be made a priority for every New Zealander, not just those who are directly affected by it, that might be enough to get the issue traction.

“It seems to me that everything comes down to money. In terms of government spending, they want to see outputs, and oh gosh,” she says with a rueful laugh, “I’m glad I’m not a bureaucrat.”

The inquiry will release its blueprint for change, informed by all its research so far, at the end of the month. Then, politicians who have decried New Zealand’s track record, who have committed to cross-party action on the issue, will have the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are.

If you or someone you know require information or support related to child abuse or domestic violence, there are services that can help you. Whether you’re a family or whānau member, friend, neighbour, teacher, or workmate, there are things you can do to protect children from abuse and neglect.