Deep job cuts loom for family and sexual violence agency: What has it actually achieved?

Thursday, 18 June 2026

The Ministry of Justice has proposed cutting the workforce at the Centre for Family Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention by a third, reducing its positions from 78 down to 52.

The center's latest monitoring report shows it has trained 14,177 frontline workers, including police officers, to better detect abuse and connect victims with appropriate support systems.

Some in the sector say it has transformed the response to family violence, but an internal review concluded it was still not fulfiling its promise.

It was a bad headline for the Government: deep job cuts in the family and sexual violence sector. But what will the cuts actually do, and has the prevention taskforce made any difference? Isaac Davison reports

Ten years ago, the sexual and family violence sector in New Zealand was a mess.

Rates of violence were appallingly high, there was no co-ordination between agencies, and victims struggled to navigate the system.

A series of reviews led to the vaguely-named Joint Venture being set up in 2018. It later became Te Puna Aonui, then the Centre for Family Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention.

The centre linked up all of the government responses to family violence - justice, social services, health, and others. At the time, responsibility for the Government response was spread across 10 departments and no one had a bird’s-eye view or accountability. With a new, single agency, chief executives could no longer “pass the buck”.

“The research was very, very clear,” said Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson, who was previously the Minister for Prevention of Sexual and Family Violence. “Unless there was this joint approach, coordination and clear accountability … we were not going to be able to tackle the crisis of violence prevention.”

Last week, it was reported that the Centre for Family Violence and Sexual Violence could lose a third of its workforce. The Ministry of Justice has proposed cutting its staff from 78 to 52 positions.

The potential impact of these proposed cuts is disputed. The Government emphasises they are not frontline roles. But some in the sector say they are just as important because the centre plays a crucial part in co-ordinating all of the disparate parts of the system.

“If we remove funding from the back end, the front end is going to suffer,” Waiariki Women’s Refuge chief executive Sarah Small told Stuff.

Small, who is based in Rotorua, said that before the centre existed, communities were on their own. No one talked to each other, family violence was poorly understood, and specialist services (like police officers trained in family harm) were limited or non-existent.

The centre’s impact was not immediate. The Auditor-General found in mid-2021 that it had done little to make government departments work together and significant improvements were needed.

Small said that, in her view, it was now playing a critical role.

“In communities, it is in full flight,” she said. “We've got a coordinated response where we've got mental health, we've got people in housing, we've got people in government agencies all working together to get the better outcome for the whanau. And it is the centre that has given us the foundation to build all these relationships.”

She believed there was a direct link between the centre’s work and falling violence rates.

“In regards to my community, we have seen a decrease in family violence. And that is because professionals are not catching and dispatching. We are in it for the long haul. We have also seen a decrease in police callouts because people have been able to intervene earlier.”

That trend is being observed nationwide. The Crime and Victims Survey found a decrease in family violence offences since 2018, when the unit was set up. Victimisations fell to 1.4% of the population in 2025, down from 2.3% in 2025 and 2.2% in 2018. Sexual assault was also trending down.

The centre’s latest monitoring report showed a more complicated picture. The number of victims were falling but the number of violent incidents had risen - indicating that a smaller group of people were experiencing more violence. The proportion of New Zealanders who had been sexually abused had remained steady since the centre was set up. Significant progress had been made for young people, with far fewer saying they had been hit at home. Unwanted sexual experiences among teenagers were also falling.

The Public Service Association (PSA) said three of the centre’s National Trainers could be cut in the restructure. It is not clear how many of the roles remain - Stuff has asked the ministry to clarify.

These workers were partly responsible for training frontline workers, like police officers, in dealing with victims and abusers. This training helped those workers detect when family violence was occurring and direct the victim to the appropriate support. It was also designed to make sure their response did not worsen or perpetuate the harm they had already experienced.

The monitoring report showed it had so far trained 14,177 workers in frontline roles. Around two-thirds of people in these roles said they had received training in family violence in the last year, and half had received sexual violence training. That had not always translated into better experiences for family violence victims, with falling rates of satisfaction among those who had contact with government services (albeit based on small sample sizes).

In December, the centre commissioned an independent review. Completed in February, it found the centre was still not fulfilling its intended role. It was struggling to hold collective agencies to account and acted more like a strategic coordinator than a “systems governor”.

The review also found that the centre had grown too large. It was now duplicating the work of other ministries, rather than working as a facilitator. The centre has four communications staff, despite doing little to no external communications.

The review found the centre was also slow to translate high-level frameworks into local, tangible action.

“The reality is that, in my view, The Centre was founded with good intentions and works in a vital part of our social sector but it was not given a clear role and lacked clear focus on how it can best support that sector and partner government agencies,” said Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Karen Chhour.

Chhour said she had heard feedback from the sector that the centre had not delivered the collective accountability needed across government agencies.

“I believe that feedback was fair and have spoken to the centre about reducing duplication, improving accountability, and providing clarity around their role.”

She said public access to family and sexual violence services would not be affected by any change process.

Davidson, however, said that by cutting roles at the centre the Government was now “deprioritising” coordination and accountability for family and sexual violence.

While they were not frontline cuts, the Government had also reduced funding for some frontline services, Davidson said. In particular, a programme called Operation Whetu has been paused with no further funding allocated. The initiative would have allowed various agencies - police, social services, healthcare - to share data in real time in high-risk cases.

Operation Whetu stalled in December, with officials saying there was no practical or sustainable way for it to proceed.

The ministry is still consulting on the job cuts, with final decisions expected at the end of July.