What works: reducing the impact of alcohol on family violence

April 22, 2015 at 3:39 PM

Superu has just released a What works: reducing the impact of alcohol on family violence.  Our What Works series synthesises what we do and don’t know about a specific social sector topic. We draw on international and New Zealand research to identify what does and doesn’t work to address the topic at hand.

This review highlights the role alcohol plays in family violence – particularly in relation to intimate partner violence and child maltreatment.  Alcohol can escalate aggressive incidents between intimate partners and women experience more severe outcomes of intimate partner violence when alcohol is involved.  Both intimate partner violence and child maltreatment are related to the density of alcohol outlets in the area.

Approaches to reduce the impact of alcohol are also outlined in the paper.  Integrating effective alcohol and family violence strategies may help reduce alcohol-related family violence.

There is little New Zealand research on the effectiveness of interventions aiming to address alcohol and family violence and very little administrative or survey data linking alcohol and family violence. The research and data gaps are outlined in greater depth in the paper.

This What works brief is based on a literature review undertaken by SHORE & Whāriki Research Centre, Massey University for Superu.

You can read the report here. 

 

The New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse has also recently released a selected bibliography of literature related to the impacts of alcohol and other drugs. You can read this here. 



Category: Research