KEY POINTS:
- Do you support the questioning of all women?
New screening questions in clinics are finding that one in every five women has suffered domestic violence in the past year.
As revealed in the Herald yesterday, an $11 million programme to ask questions about family violence of all women attending public
hospitals is to be launched by Health Minister Pete Hodgson today.
The questions are expected to uncover child abuse.
Studies have found that between 30 and 70 per cent of domestic violence also involves child abuse.
Tests in Counties-Manukau have found that 21 per cent of women attending Middlemore Hospital's adults' and children's emergency departments, and 23 per cent of female patients at a Raukura Hauora o Tainui health clinic, answered "yes" to at least one of three questions about recent family violence.
Women's Refuge chief executive Heather Henare said refuges and other agencies would not be able to cope with referrals on that scale without more Government money.
None of 67 women interviewed two to eight weeks after they were asked the family violence questions in Counties-Manukau found them offensive. Many wished they had been asked about family violence earlier.
The issue has been thrust into headlines by the cases of two Rotorua children now in the Starship hospital in Auckland. The condition of a 12-week-old boy with suspicious head injuries has improved.
Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Loper said yesterday: "He's on the mend reasonably well."
And 3-year-old Nia Glassie had been taken off her ventilator.
"She's not in a coma, but her condition hasn't changed much," Mr Loper said.
The anti-violence questions have been tested in pilot schemes by the Auckland, Counties-Manukau, Lakes (Rotorua/Taupo) and Hawkes Bay district health boards.
Ministry of Health programme manager Jo Elvidge said six boards already operate screening programmes and a further 14 have family violence co-ordinators.
The questions vary in different districts. For example, Counties-Manukau does not ask whether women have felt "controlled or always criticised". It asks only about physical harm, forced sexual activity and a feeling of being unsafe.
Researcher Jane Koziol-McLain, an American-born nursing educator at the Auckland University of Technology, said the New Zealand figures were similar to studies she had done in the US: "In a healthcare setting, in general you will get a higher rate than the population-based studies show because of the health effects [of abuse]."
Jo Elvidge said national guidelines specified that the questions be asked in a sound-proof place. They allowed the questions to be asked at any time, not necessarily when a woman had just arrived at hospital in a stressed state.
A Whakatane couple who advocate for men in marriage breakups, Mawera Karetai and Dave Barrett, said a question about whether women had felt "controlled or always criticised" encouraged some women to walk out of their marriages and take out protection orders barring their husbands from seeing them or the children, when there had been no physical violence.
"Men think they go off to work, they earn the money, they come home, they're tired and they have an expectation that certain things will be done, like dinner will be cooked and the washing done," Miss Karetai said. "If those basic needs are not met, they complain. The Women's Refuge considers that to be abuse."
Ms Henare said women's refuges asked for a $15 million increase on their Government grant of $5.5 million in this year's Budget to cope with increased referrals from the health system and an $11 million public advertising campaign.
Jo Elvidge said the ministry was monitoring the refuges' workload and would provide money if it was needed.
Casualty Count
* 21 per cent of women in Middlemore Hospital said they had experienced violence, sexual pressure or felt unsafe in the past year.
* 44 per cent of women had experienced family violence at some stage in their lives.
* 34 per cent of Maori patients had experienced family violence.
* 20 per cent - The figure for European and Pacific women.