Leading family violence and sexual violence sector leaders say the work underway to develop a National Strategy and Action Plans must be well designed and executed because there is an unlikely to be a better chance to get it right.

“This national strategy is really significant because we’ve never had one before specifically to tackle sexual violence and we’ve waited a really long time to get it. We’ve also waited a really long time to have a specific Minister,” says Maggy Tai Rākena, Manager for START, an independent Christchurch-based social services agency.

“To create a great strategy, we need to hear from the people at the coal face; the people who have been harmed sexually, and also the people doing the harm and the people who help the people in both of those categories.”

Sexual violence can be tough for people to talk about but Ms Tai Rākena praises the Government’s inclusive consultation approach which has involved hundreds of hui, anonymous online surveys, and postcards during the just completed seven-week engagement process for the development of a National Strategy and Action Plans.

The specialist sexual violence sector actively led, hosted and participated in the consultation process, as well as providing opportunities for their service users to participate.

“It’s great that the Government created the opportunity to give voice to those who wanted it. I put some butcher’s paper up on the wall in our service’s waiting room – we see children, youth and adults who have experienced sexual violence across the gender, socioeconomic and ethnic divide.”

Ms Tai Rākena posted a simple question about what people thought was needed in the strategy, and left out post-it notes and felt pens, and invited all to participate. It was an opportunity to engage in a known space, she says.

“It was up there for three or four weeks. We got a good page full of responses that I’ve sent on to the Joint Venture – the unedited version written ‘as is, where is’. It’s a timely synopsis. We didn’t chase our clients, we just gave them a reasonably private forum where they could pick up a pen and write when no one was about.”

The next step of creating a national strategy is complex and a big piece of work, she says. The most important thing is what action results from the strategy.

“Simplistic solutions are not going to solve it. This is a lifetime of work and so it requires us to be thinking about all ages, all demographics and all sorts of discrete cultural groups – whether it be LGBTQ+, ethnic cultures, children or youth. We need to be thinking about it at every level, primary prevention, early intervention, crisis response, long term recovery, and we must include indigenous models of response.”

Because of the wide variety of people affected by sexual violence, Ms Tai Rākena believes the Government needs to support diverse responses that are well considered, thoughtful, and sound to take care of people.

“This is a team of five million kind of a job – for all of us – while perpetrators are the focus of the problem, they also reflect wider society. We need to examine what role we can all play in terms of changing the culture of our society concerning healthy sexual behaviour. We have to keep this conversation going,” Ms Tai Rākena says.

“We need to get our head round it… It’s a solvable problem. Eat the elephant one bite at a time – just ignoring it will not eliminate anything. If we don’t educate ourselves to know how to do better, we are all perpetrating the cultural paradigm unwittingly that enables it.”

The national engagement period ended last week. The National Strategy and Action Plans are due to be approved by Cabinet and then launched later this year.

For more information on the Joint Venture go to: https://www.violencefree.govt.nz/

Insights from the national engagement: https://www.violencefree.govt.nz/have-your-say/#informed

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