Family violence pilot ‘a concern’

New Zealand’s oldest refuge withdrew from a pilot scheme to combat domestic violence because an influx of cases put too much of a strain on staff.

Aviva Family Violence Services, formerly the Christchurch Woman’s Refuge, had to place a block on the more traditional referrals due to the increased workload from the police-led Integrated Safety Response (ISR) pilot programme, according to chief executive Nicola Woodward.

The scheme was launched in Christchurch in 2016 and Waikato about three months later, to operate for three years.

The programme’s scope was limited to family harm episodes attended by police and people deemed high-risk by the Department of Corrections when released from prison.

Woodward said that meant, over a year, it only catered for about a quarter of all domestic violence incidents.

‘‘Because of the pressure we were experiencing to bring our staff to the ISR pilot, we actually had to implement a block on receiving referrals directly from [the CDHB] and Oranga Tamariki because we just didn’t have the capacity.’’

Aviva was one of several nongovernment support agencies involved in the scheme, which included the Ministries of Justice, Children and Health, to provide a ‘‘safety planning system to respond families’’.

An evaluation of the programme, published in August, found nearly 10,000 ‘‘family safety plans’’ were created for cases involving about 30,000 people.

These included assessing people’s support needs, visiting or phoning them, discussing alternative accommodation or arranging visits from support groups.

However, just 211 cases – about two per cent – across both regions had interventions, such as stopping violence programmes.

‘‘Lack of recorded interventions has been noted previously as a concern . . . it is also possible that referrals are simply not being made. This is clearly an area requiring further attention,’’ the report read. to violence within