Hauraki District council are partnering with the police and Family Safety Services to curtail violence between young people in the district.
 
Family Safety Services is an NGO that delivers ‘Living without Violence’ programs to men, women and youths in Hauraki and Coromandel districts says Rex Simpson, Manager of Family Safety Services.
 
He made an approach to the council to run a piolet program in the district in association with the police to intervene with youths aged between 14-24 who have been arrested for a low-level, alcohol, drug and violence related offence, which, depending on circumstances would not necessarily require a court appearance after reading about the effectiveness of a similar program initiated by the Tauranga City council as part of their safer cities campaign.
 
Over a twelve month period there were 180 times the police were called to situations involving young people between the age of 17 and 26. Of those 78 were random acts of violence involving young people and half involved alcohol.
 
Over the same period there were 48 cases of bully and intimidation by young people between the age of 14 and 17.
 
Hauraki District Mayor John Tregida said that the council wants to achieve a safe and healthy community through creating towns in the district that are not only safe but perceived by people as being safe.
 
“The Council supports wellbeing and safety by actively promoting law enforcement partnerships and positive ways of reducing crime to enhance the feeling of safety and acknowledges it’s important that young people live in a safe and supportive community,” he said.
 
As part of a Hauraki Crime Prevention strategy to identify and implement initiatives working towards preventing and reducing crime, the HDC allocated $5,000 to help fund an anti-violence, Screen and Brief Intervention (SBI) pilot.
 
In 2001 the New Zealand Government established the Crime Reduction Strategy (CRS) as an across government strategy for preventing and reducing crime. The priority areas are Family violence and child abuse, community violence and sexual violence, burglary, organized crime, serious traffic offending and Youth offending and reoffending. Local MP Scott Simpson says the collaboration between the police, local authority and Family Safety Services is a positive thing.
 
He says that it is important to look at the patterns behind the violence rather than focusing on individual incidents and that the proposed intervention program will encourage young people to get help to make a positive change by understanding where their violent behaviour stems from.

1) "Keep a stiff upper lip"
Our British ancestors developed the belief that any expression of hurt, fear or vulnerability was a sign of weakness.  This has led to a cultural practice of 'emotional repression' which in turn leads to the dangerous build-up of painful feelings that ultimately are expressed in outbursts of anger and rage.

Remedy:

1. Shift our cultural practices towards developing "emotional intelligence", the ability to safely express all our feelings. 
2. Change a collective social belief that being vulnerable is not weak, its human.

 
Raising our collective emotional intelligence will strengthen individual self-confidence (goodbye jealousy and insecurity), increase the capacity to take personal responsibility for choices, reduce mental illness and also reduce drug and alcohol abuse - a favorite remedy for easing emotional pain.

2) "Sticks and stones may break our bones but names will never hurt us"
This false belief denies the reality of the power of words to hurt the feelings of others, and damage identity and self-respect, especially for children.  Physical family violence takes the lives of approximately 50 people a year, suicide takes the lives of 560 a year, with more than 12,000 engaging in 'failed' attempts.

Remedy:

1. Culturally promote the understanding of the power of words to hurt or heal.

3) Beliefs about violence and control
We have widely accepted and long-standing beliefs that violence of many different sorts is necessary and justified to achieve so-called desirable outcomes.  We have thousands of movies that glamourize violence and cultivate the same visceral impulses that drove the Roman enthusiasm for the coliseum, the thrill of watching life and death struggle and living to tell the tale.

Remedy: 

1. Carry out an exercise to identify the specific harmful beliefs and replace them with life-honouring beliefs. 
2. Find alternative ways to experience the thrill of life/death without glamourizing gratuitous violence.

 
4) Cultural bias
Women who have good self-respect, social support and a measure of financial independence will not tolerate abusive treatment, and have the material and emotional resources to leave.
 
The role of women as mothers predisposes them to financial dependency. 

Remedy:

1. A meaningful social acknowledgement of the tremendous effort, great skill and persistent self-sacrifice involved in raising children could be made through the provision of a parenting allowance.  This will contribute to both improving the self-respect and the capacity of women to 'choose respect and safety' for themselves and their children, rather than endure years of abuse because they don't feel worthy of respect, and don't have the means to leave.

I know that the Government has been doing their sums on the social cost of family violence by adding up the cost of Police, Courts, Probation Service, Ministry of Justice, and Prisons in responding family violence.  They haven't included the sums in the Mental Health Service.  Only the combined efforts of the community could start to add up the additional cost of 'expensive emotions" in the damage to property.

It might not be easy, but wouldn't it be worth it?  New Zealand led the way in votes for women.  We led the way in becoming 'nuclear free' (a very popular policy internationally).  What a source of pride it could be if we led the way in making family violence history.  That's a challenge worthy of our 'we can do it' national spirit.
 
 
Rosalie Steward
 
Family Programme Coordinator