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June 12, 2020 at 2:29 PM

From the NZFVC

Budget 2020 was announced on 14 May 2020. The Budget included areas of funding related to family violence, Family Court, care and protection of children, and social sector capacity.

The Government made a pre-Budget announcement of $183 million dollars of funding for family and sexual violence. (See the summary of initiatives from the Joint Venture for the breakdown of this funding.) The announcement also included $19.9 million for a cross-agency initiative with Police, Justice and Health to ensure victims of non-fatal strangulation can access trained medical practitioners and the forensic services necessary to gather the robust evidence required to prosecute offenders.

Further Budget 2020 announcements included an additional $22 million of funding related to family violence:

• $13 million to provide therapeutic services and treatment for children and young people who are exposed to family violence
• $8.6 million over two years to help family violence providers increase capacity to respond to increased demand for services due to the impacts of COVID-19 (see the MSD Fact Sheet on Responding to Increased Demand for Family Violence Services).

In his speech, Finance Minister Grant Robertson provided an overview of Budget 2020 highlighting three themes:

• Child poverty
• COVID-19 respond, recover and rebuild (which includes business support, infrastructure, housing, environment jobs, education and training, sector recovery and community wellbeing)
• Core services (which includes health, social sector, education, primary industries, justice sector, arts and culture, defence and foreign affairs, and transport)

Grant Robertson stated:

"New Zealand's ability to respond strongly to COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of investing in, and maintaining, core government services that support all New Zealanders' lives and wellbeing. Accordingly, the Budget 2020 package focuses on support for public services and key infrastructure. This builds on the record investment made in the past two years, rebuilding services after a decade of underfunding. It remains critical we maintain the vital public services New Zealand needs to overcome COVID-19.

This investment will complement and support our targeted COVID-19 response, recovery and rebuilding measures. The $50 billion COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF), established through the Budget, will be used to continue our support for households and businesses and begin the work to help support our society and economy to rebuild."

All Wellbeing Budget 2020 Government announcements are available online. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has Budget 2020 Fact Sheets that provide brief summaries of funding related to a number of areas in the social sector.

Click here for more information