Family violence services to get $76 million cash injection from Govt

Minister for Social Development and Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni, left, this morning announced an extra near $77m will be poured into supporting family violence support services. Photo/File

Family violence services will get a boost of $76.2m over four years in the Budget - a 30 per cent increase in total funding.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the new spending at a Salvation Army event in Wellington this morning - the first funding increase for frontline services in 10 years.

Ardern said in the longer-term a culture shift was needed in New Zealand if it was to fix its with domestic violence problem.

But in the meantime, the Government needed to ensure that services were properly funded.

"We need to face up to that, make sure that we resource those services properly while we try and bring those numbers down," she said.

Ardern said women's refuges and other agencies dealing with violence had been "unfairly distracted and undermined" over the past decade.

The Salvation Army's Major Pam Waugh said the funding was a huge boost, though it would need to be sustained over a long period to make a difference.

"It is enough to get started and to make a huge impact," Waugh said.

"Family violence is one of the biggest problems in creating poverty, as well as the other issues, so we need to build on that."

About 70 per cent of the Salvation Army's clients had either been abused themselves or witnessed family violence.

"So we see children that are very stressed by it. We see children that become very marginalised.

"And we see family living in complete poverty where the financial stress of it becomes a huge problem for them."

Over the past decade, the organisation had dipped into its reserves to keep running.

"We've had to cut some services, we haven't been able to give good wage increases to our staff, we've had to actually lay staff off."

Among the services it had cut were financial mentoring, welfare support and social work.

Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said frontline services would now be able to expand into areas where there was no support and address rising demand for services.

"Family violence has a damaging, yet often hidden, impact on victims' lives, including their ability to work and lead a normal life," Sepuloni said.

"This funding will provide a boost to around 150 providers of family violence services nationwide.

Jan Logie, Under-Secretary to the Minister of Justice, said the funding was an important first step for services which were stretched to "breaking point".

"As we start the broader work of challenging and responding to family and sexual violence, it's crucial that victims and their families can get the support they need now. They can't wait."

New Zealand has one the worst rates of family violence in the world. Police are called to an incident about every five minutes - around 110,000 cases a year. That is despite around 80 per cent of cases going unreported.