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December 07, 2017 at 4:25 PM

*From the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse*

A progress report from the Working together to achieve whānau wellbeing in Waitematāproject has recommended a backbone type of support for the primary prevention of family and sexual violence.

The project was a collaborative effort to look at ways to increase community-led primary prevention of family and sexual violence. Project partners included the Waitākere, North Shore and Rodney family violence networks, and central and local government agencies.

The formal project activities were completed in 2016. Project partners have been working on integrating the learnings and tools from the project in their networks and with additional agencies and communities. Six months on, Auckland Council commissioned a progress report with support from the Ministry of Social Development.

The Working together to achieve whānau wellbeing in Waitematā: progress assessment report identifies the following key outcomes:

• Project partners and the wider sector have an increased awareness and focus on primary prevention
• Three new primary prevention prototypes have been started (case studies are included in the report)
• Project partners have been using the tools developed during the project within their own organisations
• Project partners have started to develop relationships beyond the family and sexual violence sector and have identified new opportunities within existing relationships to work on primary prevention
• Project partners have developed new collaborations to grow system capability for primary prevention.

When looking at opportunities for continuing and future work, the report states:

"It should be noted that the impact achieved to date has occurred in the absence of any specific ongoing funding or co-ordinated support, and is based on the momentum of the original project investment. This assessment highlights the possibility of what could be achieved with dedicated support to sustain and accelerate momentum."

The report goes on to identify four specific key learnings including a recommendation to develop a backbone of support. The four key learnings are:

• Learning is still growing in the area of community-led primary prevention of family and sexual violence. More support is required to make sure this learning is shared and to grow the evidence-base.
• The initial report and tools developed from the project could be used to develop new collaborations to foster community-led primary prevention.
• There are different opportunities and barriers for community-led primary prevention depending on the role of the person or setting (the report includes an overview of nine roles). 
• To maximise the impact of community led primary prevention initiatives "... a backbone type of support that provides coordination between a central evidence-base and local initiatives is required."

The progress report also notes "... that none of the recommendations from the original report have been fully realised. Dedicated backbone type support would help ensure that this critical progress is made."

Related information

Aotearoa New Zealand

Some of the partners in the project launched the Auckland Humanity Project (a social media primary prevention campaign) in March 2017. An 8 Weeks of Humanity campaignwas then run in September.

Also in March 2017, a regional wānanga was held on preventing violence - see the presentations and videos. The wānanga was hosted by Auckland Council with the support of the Accident Compensation Corporation.

International

UN Women's Package of essentials for addressing violence against women (2016) includes a two page brief, 10 essentials for prevention of violence against women.

In 2015, UN Women released A framework to underpin action to prevent violence against women.

In Australia, Our Watch provides a range of resources including frameworks, toolkits, research, reports and infographics.