Rotorua family violence service welcomes Jacinda Ardern's funding announcement

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces family violence services will get a boost of $76.2 million over four years in the Budget. Photo / File

A $76.2 million funding boost to support family violence services is "definitely needed", according to one local provider.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the new spending at a Salvation Army event in Wellington today- 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 domestic violence problem.

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

Rotorua Family Focus manager Stacey Ford said the announcement was a "good move".

"The industry has been under-resourced for quite a few years now.

"It's being run on a lot of voluntary hours and hard work from staff."

Ford said the demand for domestic violence services was "very high" in Rotorua.

"These services are absolutely needed here.

"I think there's a greater awareness in our community of family violence and its impacts on the community.

"It's great people can engage in services, but it's a struggle to keep up with demand.

"It would be great to see some of the money come here."

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 about 80 per cent of cases going unreported.