Child, Youth and Family Minister Ruth Dyson
Launch of Family Safety Teams
Brentwood Hotel, 16 Kemp Street, Kilbirnie
8.30am, Monday 18 July 2005

Good morning. I am very pleased to be here today to launch what is one of the most important new initiatives to tackle family violence in this country, the new Family Safety Teams.

(As you have heard) Family Safety Teams have been set up with the aim of providing a more integrated approach to family violence. The first two teams are being launched today with a further two commencing within the next year.

You will have heard that this is a joint initiative by Police, the Ministry of Justice, Child, Youth and Family and the community sector. The Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, of which I am Minister, is the leading central government agency responsible for delivering and funding social services to support and protect children, young people and their families who are being harmed or are at high risk of harm.

Consequently, Child, Youth and Family social workers see the long-term high personal costs to those children and their families affected by violence and the significant social and economic costs to society.

Here are some disturbing facts that illustrate how the current generation of children and young people are being affected by this issue. Approximately 55,000 children were present in the almost 50,000 incidents of family violence that police attended in the year 2002/2003 and every year, about 10 children are killed in family violence situations. In the year 2000, 33% of the victims of family-violence related murders were children.

In the year ended 30 June 2004, Child, Youth and Family received a total of 43,314 notifications of possible abuse and neglect. This represents a 36% increase from the previous year and of these notifications, 4260 were police family violence incidents.

Solutions to Violence
There is always another way to sort a problem out without resorting to violence and it takes patience, discipline and self-control to do that. Far from solving problems, violence just passes those same problems down to the next generation.

Unfortunately, once violence becomes so ingrained within families, some find it hard to see that what they are doing is wrong and damaging. For them, violence has tragically become the easiest solution to a problem.

The new Family Safety Teams will ensure access to services for families seeking help to cope with their family violence. At present, Child, Youth and Family provides Family Group Conference Services and support in the most serious, entrenched cases of family violence and work closely with the police and courts.

With the formation of the Family Safety Teams, there will be a much stronger community focus to give families every opportunity to take steps to overcome the violence within their families. The teams comprising police, social services and the community sector will mean better information sharing and coordination from the earliest stages of an investigation. The need for this has been highlighted in the reviews into child murder cases over the past decade.

Also, a key benefit of the teams’ multi-disciplinary approach will mean better coordination between agencies working with the same family – closing the gaps in services and support.

Family violence is an extremely complex issue and it affects families from all cultures and socio-economic circumstances. Fifty, or even 30 years ago, we couldn’t even have a national debate about family violence. Now at least, we can and we are having that debate. Attitudes are changing.
We will continue to do our best to get the right policy, laws and enforcement, but violence is not something that government alone can fix. Violence will only stop when we no longer tolerate it and
I am confident that with better support for families and with the launch of the Family Safety Teams today, family violence will become far less tolerated and widespread in society in the next few years.

Thank you.