Wellington City Libraries Palm Tree Blossoming of Our Children - Kia Puawai Ngā Tamariki - 10th Australasian Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect

Advocacy within the context of family violence - voices for adult victims, voices for children


Author

Jodine Lee plus other members of the Family Safety Team National Steering Committee (to be advised)

Speaker

Jodine Lee plus other members of the Family Safety Team National Steering Committee (to be advised)

Organisation

Senior Policy Adviser, Office of the Police Commissioner
Family Safety Team National Steering Committee

The family safety team initiative was announced as part of Budget 2004 and involves Police investigators, victim advocates and child advocates working together to ensure that the full range of issues facing a family experiencing violence are addressed. This initiative has been developed and implemented by Police, the Ministry of Justice and Child, Youth and Family, in collaboration with the community sector.

One of the key premises of the family safety team initiative is to ensure that the voices of victims of family violence (predominantly women and children) are heard within statutory and non-statutory systems and that these voices inform risk assessment and interventions. The development of this premise has presented challenges for the teams, in terms of what advocacy means in context of family violence, and how the roles of the victim and child advocate interface (particularly where their roles may conflict).

This presentation explores those challenges, how the team initiative has build on victim and child advocacy networks in communities, the policy work behind the development of these roles and the initial findings from the deployment of the Auckland, Hamilton, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa teams. It also explores the differences between child advocates employed in the teams by non-government providers and those employed by Child Youth and Family (who have statutory powers).

Presentation

Paper

Biography

Jodine Lee is a Senior Policy Adviser in the Policy, Planning and Evaluation Group at the Office of the Commissioner, New Zealand Police. She joined Police in 2003 and has focussed on Family Violence and Youth policy. Jodine has also been working with key agencies involved in the family safety team initiative, both from the government and non-government sector. Members from these sectors may co-present with Jodine (to be advised).