Budget 2020 investment in family violence and sexual violence responses
This is the second year Joint Venture agencies have worked together to develop Budget initiatives.
Jan Logie, Under-Secretary to the Minister of Justice (Domestic and Sexual Violence Issues), and Associate Minister for Social Development, Poto Williams, jointly announced the initiatives, which include investment of $202.9 million over four years on services for victims and perpetrators of family violence, and a cross-government initiative to enable specialist responses to non-fatal strangulation.
These initiatives include $183.0 million over four years to ensure continued access to specialist family violence services, providing support for victims of family violence ($142.0 million), services to help perpetrators to stop inflicting family violence ($16.0 million), and support for victims of elder abuse ($25.0 million).$19.9 million will go to a cross-agency initiative with Police, Justice and Health to ensure victims of non-fatal strangulation can access highly trained medical practitioners and the forensic services necessary to gather the robust evidence required to prosecute offenders.
The initiatives bring significant support to stabilising New Zealand’s family violence sector, whose work has been shown to be so essential throughout the COVID-19 lockdown.
Read more about the initiatives [PDF, 680 KB].
Read more about the Joint Venture and the family violence and sexual violence work programme.