Our recommendations

We recommend that Te Puna Aonui agencies:

1. work together and with advocacy groups for those affected by family violence and sexual violence to find safe and appropriate ways to hear directly from people who experience or use violence, to improve how responses to family violence and sexual violence are provided;
2. support the transformational change set out in Te Aorerekura by working with tangata whenua and community partners to agree on how they will develop and implement a partnership approach and clarify their respective roles, authority, and accountabilities;
3. each ensure that they are better connecting work taking place at the national and local levels to support the development of local initiatives and ensure that these initiatives are informing the development of responses to family violence and sexual violence more generally;
4. work together and with community partners to agree on legally appropriate and robust protocols for sharing information about incidents of family violence and sexual violence to support responding in ways that best support the individuals, families, and whānau affected. The protocols will need to ensure that people whose information is being collected understand why their information is being collected and who can use that information;
5. gather information from their monitoring of programmes and initiatives, share it with communities and non-government organisations, and together use this information to improve existing responses or design new responses; and
6. work together and with local initiatives and community partners to identify, prioritise, and manage the capacity constraints that currently affect the ability of the family violence and sexual violence system to respond effectively. Te Puna Aonui agencies, tangata whenua, and community partners could consider including this work in the next action plan for Te Aorerekura.