Papakura marae launches family violence prevention programme

Papakura - Following on from successful trials conducted by their frontline family violence social workers, Papakura Marae has given the green light to launch their family violence prevention programme into the community.

This initiative was the brainchild of marae chief executive Tony Kake.

He enlisted the support of Sir Ray Avery, founder of the Help@Hand trust, to trial a domestic violence support programme to protect his frontline family violence social workers as they go about their work in the community. This gave them instant access to help and ensuring all his frontline staff are kept safe from harm.

New Zealand holds one of the highest rates of family violence in the world, with an act of family violence reported every four minutes to the police, community workers are in urgent need for extra support out in the field.

Kake says now their family violence team has successfully completed the trial, he knows they will be safe when they go into the community to teach family violence victims how to keep themselves safe from ongoing fear of abuse.

Marae team leader Dee Clark, who oversaw the marae trial says the initial trial was to make sure the hardware met their family violence team members personal needs and to train their team how to teach victims of domestic violence in the community how to use it.

Throughout the trial the Jupl team, a company providing a full platform-as-a-service to businesses, were always on hand to help modify the software to meet individual needs, Clark says.

“I really love the feeling of safety and security of having a wearable safety device to protect me and my team as we go into the community supporting family violence victims.

“The device also provides hope for our whanau to give back their freedom to be safe, freedom to leave their home and an assurance for safety, to keep our whanau safe and alive.”

The trial was funded by Sir Ray Avery’s Help@Hand Trust https://helpathand.org.nz/ following a donation from the Ted Manson Foundation, Clark says.

“The foundation recognises there is a strong correlation between domestic violence and those living in poverty. We are working in the community with our school funding assistance programme, so helping with domestic violence will align with this.

“There is an urgent need for practical interventions to protect victims, so we are more than proud to be the major sponsor for Sir Ray’s Help@Hand campaign.”

Sir Ray Avery says working with Clark’s marae team has both humbled and inspired him.

“It has been a real privilege to work alongside them, they give me hope that we can turn our terrible rate of family violence abuse around.

“NZ Whānau Protect trials showed an 80 percent reduction in re-victimisation when they were protected by monitored alarm technologies. The marae community has even better tools now available not only to protect victims of domestic violence but also the frontline workers who work tirelessly in the community changing lives one by one.

“The cost of sexual violence in NZ has been estimated to be over $6.9 billion and the total cost of family violence being much higher. It seems absurd  that we are sending our frontline family violence into workers into potentially violence environments totally unprotected and with no real time peer support.”

For further information contact Sir Ray Avery on 0274760591 or Tony Kake on 021 519812