Strategic funding case study – Developing a local allocation model for family violence funding

Family violence is endemic. The extent to which communities are able to identify, challenge and address its existence and effects varies considerably. Unsurprisingly, these factors have a significant impact on the data available about family violence, which poses particular problems in allocating resources for services in this area.

In December 2005, Child, Youth and Family (CYF) began a process to establish local allocations for some of its family violence funding.

In 2002, the Government launched Te Rito: New Zealand Family Violence Prevention Strategy. Developed in partnership with a number of NGOs, Te Rito sets out a range of action plans to tackle family violence.

CYF contract extensively with service providers working in this area, and are responsible for administering the specific funds established to implement the Te Rito strategy.

A review of the model previously used by CYF to contract services as part of Te Rito revealed:

• that using one source of family violence statistics did not reflect the extent of the problem and the demand for services
• the open tendering process used to select providers raised expectations across the family violence sector and resulted in significant over-subscription
• a number of geographical locations with poor or no access to children’s support services.

When new funding to support services for children who witness family violence became available in 2005, a new model was created to allocate the funding.

CYF representatives from the four regional operation areas and national office, along with key NGOs, met to consider the development of the regional allocation model.

The group considered a wide range of family violence statistics from various sources, including the longer term use of services as well as crisis reporting.

These were mapped against the under-17 age profile for each region and final adjustments were made to:

• address the impact of pilot initiatives in some regions, such as Family Safety Teams, which increased reporting rates for family violence
• reflect increased travel costs to service providers operating in rural and remote areas
• safeguard provider sustainability by not decreasing the regional funding allocation by more than 10 percent a year.

Provider expectations were managed by running a closed-tender process.

The risk of excluding new providers and continuing ad hoc geographic coverage were mitigated by developing local CYF family violence funding strategies. These documented:

• needs and issues identified by local Family Violence Funding Circuit Breaker Teams (government agencies funding family violence services) and local Te Rito collaboration networks
• gaps in current service provision
• emerging trends in family violence
• priority areas for funding, for example, service purchasing where a good range of quality provision exists, supporting service development in under-served communities.

The final stage of the process involved establishing local allocations. For consistency, the statistics used for the regional allocation and the local funding strategies were used to determine the local allocations.

The local strategies also became part of the selection criteria, with potential providers setting out how their services addressed the priority issues.

CYF funding advisors work with the range of local social service providers and have important relationships with communities and crucial insights to offer national developments.

Involving funding advisors in national developments, ensuring they have accurate and timely information about changes in family violence policy and strategy, and providing them with other tools add significant value to their relationships with local providers and enables robust national policy development.

In many sectors, a scarcity of resources has led to high levels of competition between providers. Considerable investment has been made by local, non-government family violence providers to establish and maintain connections to benefit their clients and communities.

These networks are able to provide unique perspectives to government on the local impacts of family violence, and the outcomes of previous funding practices. Further resources are required to document local knowledge and use it for planning purposes.

A closed-tender process reduced the number of unsuccessful applicants, which reduced staff workloads and meant that there was more time to provide useful feedback to the applicants.  

For more information contact:

Jan Symington
Team Leader Programme Strategy
Child, Youth and Family
Ministry of Social Development