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March 12, 2015 at 10:26 AM

New Zealand Police are embarking on an internal change programme to improve the way they respond to family violence. This will include utilising external experts and community groups for advice. Interviewed on Radio New Zealand, Superintendent Tusha Penny said,

"We are saying 'help us get better, help us know what to look at for Police.' We're looking overseas at other jurisdictions to see what's leading edge and the one thing we're certain of is we want to be aspirational. We want other police jurisdictions coming to NZ Police in 12 to 24 months and saying 'Wow, what did you do?'"

Superintendent Tusha Penny comes to the role of national manager of prevention from previous her role as national manager of child protection and sexual violence and prior to that, heading the NZ Police Wellington District Child Protection Team.

NZ Police have also recently made Rape Prevention Education Survivor Advocate Louise Nicholas a Patron of the Royal New Zealand Police College, to provide mentorship and coaching to new Police recruits. Police Training Manager, Superintendent John Price, said "I'm hoping she'll educate our staff as to what's important in dealing with rape victims and make sure we put them at the front and centre of policing." Louise Nicholas said, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of the lives of 40 really special people who have put their hands up and said ‘I want to make a difference.’ I want to be part of that as much as I can."

NGO POlice Consultation - Feedback needed:

On Monday 16th of March, Police are hosting a workshop in Wellington to outline the process and to seek feedback from NGOs working in the family violence sector as to what the Police are doing well and what they could be doing better. 

The workshop will consist of three components:

• Introduction (Superintendent Tusha Penny, National Manager: Prevention)
• Overview of the proposed New Zealand Police Internal Family Violence Change Programme (Inspector Shane Cotter, Family Violence Programme Director)
• Feedback and input from Non Government Organisations.

For the third component of the workshop, we are asking participants to come along with their thoughts to share on:

• What three things are Police currently doing well in their responses to family violence?
• What three things could Police do to improve their responses to family violence?

As time is limited during the workshop, everyone may not get an opportunity to share this on the day. It is requested that your responses to these questions are written down. Attendees will be given the opportunity to leave these thoughts as written responses to these questions.

WAVES will be attending the workshop and would like to hear from agencies about their thoughts on the two questions above. If you could please email charlotte@waves.org.nz with any feedback you would like to submit to this process by 4pm Friday (tomorrow) that would be great. This is a fantastic opportunity to work alongside Police to help them to improve their processes around family violence.