The Office of the Auditor-General commissioned Carswell Consultancy to prepare this report. Dated September 2020, released in July 2021.

The Office of the Auditor-General (the Office) has a programme of work focusing on the Government’s efforts to achieve significant and sustained reductions in family violence, sexual violence, and child abuse and neglect. The purpose of this report is to inform this programme of work by providing an overview of what is currently known about people’s and service providers’ experiences of the family violence system in Aotearoa.

The report includes a narrative literature review of research and evaluation studies conducted in Aotearoa since 2010 and an annotated bibliography of 136 studies. To identify the main publications, we began with the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse Timeline – Research. We identified further relevant publications through a focused literature search. While we endeavoured to include as many relevant studies as possible, there were limitations due to time and accessibility to unpublished work. (From the Executive summary).

The literature review covers 8 themes:

Theme 1: Needs of families and whānau affected by violence;

Theme 2: What kinds of services and supports are available to meet needs?;

Theme 3: Enablers and barriers to accessing and engaging with services;

Theme 4: Māori whānau experiences;

Theme 5: Experiences of different population groups;

Theme 6: Government stewardship role – what should it look like and implications for power sharing with Iwi and communities;

Theme 7: Lack of systems analysis and long-term strategic approaches;

Theme 8: Need for more systematic approach to building our collective knowledge and utilising what we learn in policies and practice.

The literature review includes an annotated bibliography (271 pages). If you would like a copy of the complete review, including the bibliography, please email us: enquiry@oag.parliament.nz.

Record #7248