Until July 2014, secondary prevention specialist sexual assault services in Canterbury New Zealand were delivered by the Survivors of Sexual Violence Trust at the Monarch Centre. When this service closed, the Ministry of Social Development invited START in partnership with Aviva to deliver such services on an interim basis until decisions about more permanent contracting arrangements could be made.
It was within the context of these interim arrangements that START and Aviva commissioned an independent research project. The overall purpose of this research was to assemble an empirical and experiential evidence base to inform investment and operational decisions about the future design, development and implementation of an exemplary and sustainable sexual assault support service for Canterbury. The specific objectives of this research were:
 To review the literature and identify and describe an empirically-based framework with which to design a sexual assault support service that is sustainable and based on models and practices that have proven to make a difference for the target group and the communities of stakeholders with which the service intersects.
 To collect, collate and report the practice wisdom of professional stakeholders who are engaged in providing sexual assault support services or who deliver policies and programmes that interact with such sexual assault support services.
The research employed a ‘proactive approach’ that sought to surface the extent of the demand and need amongst the defined target client population for a sexual assault support service; synthesize what is known in the empirical and grey literature about models, approaches and practices associated with sexual assault support services that have potential to achieve maximum effects; and draw on the experiential wisdom of key national and local stakeholders within the sexual violence and other sectors to illuminate ‘good practice’ benchmarks of structure and practice associated with secondary prevention specialist sexual violence services.
The research project adopted a multiple methods approach in order to maximise the comprehensiveness of the qualitative and quantitative information collected to answer the research questions and address the research objectives. The principle research methods used included the synthesis of international and national literature (secondary data) and the operationalisation of a survey design through in-depth individual and group interviews (primary data). (From the Research objectives and methodology, pp.11-12). Record #5324