Community Action

“As a community we monitor with concern and alarm road deaths and accidents. What we don’t hear about so often are the number of families who are devastated by family violence. When we do, we cannot but be shocked by what we hear.

Every year about 10 children are killed in New Zealand by a member or members of their family.

Between 20 November 2005 and the beginning of January 2006, six women were killed by their partners or former partners. Their deaths left at least 19 children without a mother.

During December and January, Police attended nearly 11,000 incidents of reported family violence. That’s about one incident every eight minutes. More than 6,000 children witnessed this violence. More than half those children were under 5.”

(From address by Rt Hon. Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand to the 10th Australasian Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect, Wellington, 15 February 2006).

The Community Action Toolkit presented here is an initiative of ACC and the Family and Community Services at the Ministry of Social Development.