Tairawhiti Abuse Intervention Network:
An Interagency Response to
Domestic Violence
A research paper in partial fulfilment for MSW (Applied) at Massey University
Kerry Menefy
2005
Introduction:
The 'Tairawhiti Abuse Intervention Network' (TAIN), is an inter-agency collaboration concerning family violence among Police, Victim Support, Women's Refuge, Child Youth and Family Service, Men Working for Change, Family Court, Community Probation, health and social service agencies in Gisborne. It was modelled on the 'Hamilton Abuse Intervention Network' (HAIP) which was formed in 1987 as a community response to family violence. The broad goal of such interagency collaborative groups is to share information in order to facilitate intervention.
A review of the literature pertinent to this topic revealed that, while there were a number of evaluations of both the Duluth Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) in USA and the HAIP pilot in Aotearoa New Zealand produced in the early to mid 1990’s, there was little up to date information about community networks currently working collaboratively to reduce violence within the home. Since the completion of the HAIP pilot evaluations, an increased emphasis on the development of social policy designed to prevent family violence has been evident.
The broad policy aim of successive governments over the last two decades has focused on the reduction of family violence through the development of prevention strategies. A series of reviews during that period culminated in the release of ‘Te Rito: The New Zealand Family Violence Prevention Strategy’ in February 2002. This strategy represents the current government’s “official response to and framework for implementing the family violence prevention plan of action” (Te Rito, 2002). The strategy recognises the range of controlling behaviours present where family violence occurs, takes a multi- faceted approach to prevention, builds on progress made through previous initiatives and links into existing initiatives and cross sector strategies (Te Rito, 2002).
The set of nine principles encapsulated in theTe Rito ‘vision’ include “approaches to family violence must be integrated, co-ordinated and collaborative” (Principle 6, Te Rito, 2002) and “the community has a right and responsibility to be involved in preventing violence in families / whanau“ (Principle 7, Te Rito, 2002). In 2004, the second phase of Te Rito included funding provisions for inter-agency collaborations under the administration of Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFs).
As policy direction shifted, changes in legislation have also occurred. The Domestic Violence Act 1995 allows victims of family violence to obtain a Protection Order. Such an Order requires perpetrators to undertake a Justice Department accredited violence prevention programme, offers voluntary programmes for victims and requires Police to arrest and charge perpetrators for any breach of the terms of the Order. Victims can choose to continue co-habitating with perpetrators while having protection from violence and threats of violence through the Order. The Sentencing Act 2002 and Parole Act 2002 provide additional guidelines for sentencing perpetrators of domestic violence including increased penalties for serious violence. The Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 and the Care of Children Act 2005 recognise that children are victims of family violence and requires that children are cared for and protected. Additional government policy initiatives and strategies including the WINZ Family Violence Intervention Programme, multi - sector Family Safety Teams, Police Family Violence Teams and collaborative initiatives such as Family Violence Funding Circuit Breaker have been developed to organise sectoral responses to specific aspects of the problem of family violence.
Since the inception of the TAIN group in 1994 the focus, methods, strategies and resources employed have undergone considerable change. An accelerated phase of growth and development has been particularly evident during the last year as a result of the successful application for funding under the Te Rito, phase II provisions. Due to the availability of this funding, TAIN was able to appoint a full time Co-ordinator.
Since that appointment, the Co-ordinator has worked proactively in the community to ensure a close working relationship among agencies working in this sphere.
Throughout this report, TAIN is described variously as a network, a collaborative, a co-operative and a collective. This is consistent with descriptions of TAIN in foundation and working documents and with the terms used by research participants. The various terms are used inter-changeably to avoid imposing a definition of the TAIN entity determined by the researcher. For similar reasons the terms ‘family violence’ and ‘domestic violence’ are also used inter-changeable in the report, as are the terms, offender, perpetrator and abuser.
Chapter One: Literature Review
History of interagency collaboration around domestic violence
The earliest documented collaboration of community agencies around the problem of domestic violence occurred in Duluth, Minnesota in 1980. This initiative grew from the frustration of Women’s Coalition members with the lack of progress in Police and criminal justice responses to domestic abuse. As men’s programmes for abusers were being developed, concerns grew that the availability of programmes “would give an already unresponsive system a way to further decriminalise these cases” (Shephard and Pence, 1999:12).
Due to the enthusiasm of local women’s shelter workers and the willingness of high ranking officials to support the initiative, Duluth was chosen as the project site. A small staff, funded by a community grant, contacted law enforcement and court agencies to access information about the inside workings of the system while simultaneously, meetings with women with first hand knowledge of being in the system were conducted. Policies, procedures and goals were established and networks formed with key advocates for change. Negotiations with nine agencies were initiated to establish procedural and policy agreements. In 1981 DAIP began to implement policies to “promote institutional change and monitor the response of the criminal justice system in Duluth” (Shephard and Pence, 1999:14). As well as ensuring continued interagency collaboration, DAIP operates a men’s non-violence programme and offers women’s advocacy and support services.
DAIP posits a ‘power and control’ model of violence which sees physical violence as a means of control which occurs alongside behaviours such as emotional abuse, intimidation, economic control, threatening, minimisation and victim blaming “all of which support the man’s dominance in the relationship” (O’Niell and Patrick, 1997:17).
This model, ‘violence as an instrumental power strategy’ fits within one of five discourses identified as social scientific models of male violence toward partners. The DAIP model provided a framework for a local project. In 1989, the National Collective of Women’s Refuges (NCWR) received a copy of a report on DAIP compiled by Ellen Pence (1989). The report was submitted to the Family Violence Prevention Co-ordinating Committee (FVPCC), a government ministerial committee formed to co-ordinate official and community activities in the family violence arena. A steering group investigated the formation of a DAIP type initiative in Aotearoa New Zealand and concluded that any proposed intervention project would need to “seek a remedy that was inclusive of Maori and would meet the needs of Maori as defined by Maori” (Balzer, 1999:241). Consequently, two strands of research were conducted simultaneously, Pakeha / European and Maori, to examine the DAIP model. The findings of both teams confirmed that:
“the Duluth model [was] the first practical programmic response to domestic violence that did not obscure or mask historic realities. Alternative approaches were based in Eurocentric psychological explanations of abuse, which isolated abusive men from their community, describing them as somehow defective, and suffering from anger problems, fear of abandonment or poor self esteem. Their violence towards women was not seen as a logical outcome of how social relations were institutionally, economically and culturally constructed but as somehow deviant” (Balzer 1999:247).
The Duluth model was seen as a mechanism that gave women autonomy and made abusers accountable while allowing for historical effects of relationship dominance and insisting that partnerships be forged among advocacy groups, the criminal justice system and community agencies working in the domestic violence arena. Accordingly a recommendation to establish a pilot project modelled on DAIP was made to the FVCPP (Balzer, 1999:249).
Although subject to initial opposition from some community organisations, the project pilot was launched in Hamilton in 1991. HAIP was managed by a governing body of six Maori and six non - Maori community representatives. Staff members included court victim advocates, programme providers for both men and women’s programmes, administrators and trainers. Paid staff were assisted by a team of thirty volunteers (Robertson, 1997 and Balzer, 1999).
Three overall goals were set prior to the implementation of HAIP. These included achieving a consistent co-ordinated approach to family violence by all primary agencies involved, providing safety at all times for the victims of family violence and holding the offender fully accountable (Dominick, 1995: ix). To achieve these goals, HAIP put in place several key elements. These included, a Police policy of arresting offenders and holding them in custody overnight, Probation services sentencing recommendations including a structured education programme, advocacy and support programmes for victims and systems for monitoring agency performance and compliance with the established protocols. In addition to establishing agreed protocols between Police, Women’s Refuge, District and Family Courts and Probation, HAIP adopted a policy of parallel development through operating Maori and non-Maori caucuses. This policy ensured that men’s and women’s programmes for both Maori and non-Maori were available (Roberston, 1997).
Inter-agency meetings were held on a monthly basis and concentrated on:
“systems: identifying gaps, clarifying roles and modifying procedures where necessary. A second focus is the discussion of particular cases where problems have been experienced” (Robertson and Busch, 1993).
The sharing of information about individual cases in an inter-agency forum was regarded as contentious in Clare Dominick’s 1995 evaluation of HAIP:
“ Ethical guidelines need to be developed in any inter - agency approach which clearly state the boundaries of appropriate and acceptable information sharing. This will aid agencies and individual staff in enhancing victim safety and maintaining ethical standards including those of privacy and confidentiality, while avoiding collusion with assailants” (Dominick, 1995:xiii).
These concerns appear somewhat at odds with the overarching principle of developing a co-ordinated approach to family violence, that is, through the sharing of information among agencies common and consistent outcomes would result. Clare Dominick’s evaluation of HAIP concluded that during the course of the pilot, communication between staff of the respective agencies involved increased.
“A number of participating agencies developed a better understanding of each others roles and mandates such that some considered their expectations became more realistic…. Overall it was clear that communication and co-operation increased for nearly all agencies” (Dominick, 1995:27).
A criticism of the inter- agency collaboration that took place was that it was not sufficiently broad or inclusive of health, child protection and community agencies (Dominick, 1995; Robertson, 1997). In terms of meeting the goals set by HAIP prior to inception, the researchers agreed that HAIP had successfully achieved a consistent co-ordinated approach to family violence. It had not consistently secured the protection of all victims at all times however, nor had HAIP guaranteed that all offenders be held accountable. Additionally, there was no evidence that HAIP had contributed to reducing rates of recidivism (Robertson and Busch, 1993), (Dominick, 1995) and (Robertson, 1997). These findings are consistent with the findings in an evaluation of DAIP , (Shephard & Pence, 1988).
They concluded that:
“while the data suggests that victims are more satisfied with the system’s response to their need for protection and that individual women are safer, there is no evidence that a community intervention model such as DAIP will eventually lead to less battering” (Shephard & Pence, 1988) cited in (Dominick, 1995:71).
The HAIP pilot, which concluded in December 1994 was jointly funded by the Department of Justice and the New Zealand Community Funding Agency. The withdrawal of continued funding for HAIP was met with disappointment.
“The government has decided against making the HAIP experiment standard national practice. It has once again left it to local groups to argue for a collaborative government and community based program effort to confront this violence” (Balzer, 1999:253).
However, HAIP continued to operate as an independent trust securing independent funding locally (Robertson, 1997). Throughout the HAIP project, researchers from Waikato University documented outcomes. The substantive programme evaluations of HAIP fed into domestic violence legislative reforms and provides a useful account of the benefits of a collaborative approach (Robertson,1997).
History and Development of TAIN
TAIN began operating in Gisborne in May 1994 following a hui on violence in the family and the community held in April 1994.
Note: the information in this section is sourced from both TAIN documents and conversations with individuals who represent agencies belonging to TAIN. To protect the confidentiality of those individuals, they have not been named as sources and are referred to in this section only as TAIN members.
The drive to establish a co-ordinated approach to family violence was led by Dr Paratene Ngata who is widely credited as being the founder of TAIN.
The initiative was modelled on HAIP and aimed to bring government and community agencies together to work collaboratively to address violence and abuse. Key groups involved in the inception of TAIN included Police, Community Probation Service, Child Youth and Family Service (CYFS), Victim Support, Women’s Refuge, Rape Crisis, Prisoner’s Aid and Rehabilitation Society, Te Runanga Tane and Men for Change (men’s programme providers). Initially Men for Change co-ordinated the network and established a cell visitor service. The participating agencies agreed to meet on a monthly basis to identify issues, inform, discuss and ‘support the kaupapa’. They explicitly adopted the Duluth ‘power and control’ model as an explanation of violent behaviour and formulated the following statement of purpose:
“To work toward the prevention and reduction of violence in our community and to promote the safety of women and children” (TAIN statement of intent, 1994, Appendix F).
In addition, twelve key objectives guided by three philosophical beliefs were outlined (Appendix G). The members of TAIN were all representatives of government and community agencies and as no funding was available to support a paid Co-ordinators role, member groups developed agency protocols to fit within TAIN’s vision. The co-operative agreements forged between Police and other agencies to process offenders and service victims mirrored those established by HAIP.