"the most comprehensive roadmap on sexual violence prevention and services that any New Zealand government has ever received. There are no quick-fix solutions when it comes to sexual violence and the Government is grateful for the guidance this report provides."The Report for the Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence started life under the last Labour Government and revealed decades of under-funding of services for survivors, family/whanau, and those with sexually harmful behaviour.
The 2009 comprehensive roadmap called for "urgent and immediate" funding to ensure services in the community could continue, let alone develop. Did you know most crisis line services in Aotearoa are run by volunteers? And that many services have wait lists to see clients, just because there are not enough paid staff?
Most survivors cannot contain their needs to nine to five. Firstly because that's not when most rapes happen. And secondly because it's not when many survivors need to talk about flashbacks and terror, receive help to cope - that's at night, or on the weekend, or when something reminds them of what happened to them, or when they feel unsafe.
At the moment one of the many marvellous helplines open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for survivors to call is Auckland Sexual Abuse Help. They run the only helpline in Auckland (there are others in South Auckland) which can respond if someone is raped and needs help going to the Police or medical services.
While Refuge services in Auckland are cutting back their hours because they are too poorly funded, it's even worse at ASAH, which has been working with survivors for
29 years. In January 2012, unless some "urgent and immediate" funding materialises, ASAH will no longer be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
You can sign a petition asking the government to sort this out before Auckland survivors lose their only 24 hour resource. Or you could email the new Minister for Women's Affairs, Jo Goodhew, and the new Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, or how about the seasoned Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett.
Perhaps remind them of the comprehensive road-map, and the distance we still have to travel before our services responding to sexual violence are available to all who need them, whenever they need them. This will not be the only service closing, unless we start following that road-map pretty damn soon.
4 comments:
I was just going to post about this but was really pleased to see you're already onto it. The heavy reliance on voluntary work and donations throughout the sexual and domestic violence services is a disgrace.
Indeed, couldn't agree more Anne. I always think - would we accept voluntary Police Officers and Child Youth and Family social workers? Of course not - their work is specialist and we believe it should be reimbursed appropriately. Yet both work with the very same families the sexual and domestic violence intervention sectors work with.
This is a very good article and raises good points about the lack of funding provided to sexual violence services. However, I disagree with the statement that most rapes happen outside of 9-5 hours. I feel this statement reinforces a myth of rape happening in dark public places. This is not true, rapes can happen at any time day or night. As a support worker for a sexual violence service I know that we get numerous calls during office hours as well as on our after hours crisis line. This is not a reflection on when rapes occur, but rather when people have time, space and privacy to make these calls.
Hi Anonymous,
def not down with the supporting of rape myths - but check this out http://www.mwa.govt.nz/news-and-pubs/publications/attrition#3-3-crime-profile
The only piece of research looking at time of offence for rape that I'm aware of in Aotearoa - as you can see, heavily skewed towards not occurring between 9am and 5pm (19% between 8am and 6pm, 81% outside those hours).
But completely agree - people call support lines, in the main, when they can. As you say, the majority of calls are not immediately post rape.
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