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Domestic violence victims will soon have state-funded advocates in some courts as part of a package of new social spending.
Social service agencies were surprised at the size of the package announced by Prime Minister Helen Clark, which starts at $37.5 million in the next financial year and climbs to an extra $192.8 million a year by 2011-12.
The extra money will fully fund all "essential services" provided by about 700 non-government agencies, including parenting programmes, budgeting, support for at-risk youth, women's refuges, family violence programmes, victim services and refugee and migrant services.
In a related measure, the Government will put an extra $6 million a year into specialist Family Violence Courts in selected centres, including independent victim advocates.
The package relieves a financial crisis for the women's refuges, which said last year that they needed an extra $15 million a year on top of their current state funding of $5.5 million.
National manager Heather Henare said the Government currently paid only 44 per cent of the refuges' costs and it appeared this would now rise to 100 per cent.
Brian Gardner of the National Network of Stopping Violence Services said the money would allow anti-violence agencies to take men who self-referred without being directed by a court.
"The Government's attitude and behaviour change campaign is having an effect and our agencies are starting to see quite significant self-referred numbers coming through," he said.
In Wellington more than half of referrals are self-referred.
"They have had to pay out of their own pockets. This means we are now going to be paid to work with them."
Jane Drumm of the Auckland agency Preventing Violence in the Home said victim advocates in courts would ensure that judges had "vital information about risk to vulnerable women and children".
Tina Reid of the Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations said she was surprised by the package, but it gave social agencies the secure funding they had been seeking for years.
"It's huge. It's actually a massive investment," she said.
But Te Whanau o Waipareira chief executive John Tamihere, who resigned from the Labour cabinet in 2004, said he would be watching the allocation of the new money closely to guard against favouritism.
"I guarantee Barnardos is a major beneficiary, given the support that its chief executive gave over the anti-smacking legislation," he said.
"If this is gerrymandering, you'll hear about it."
He said his trust had been trying without success to get money for a "wrap-around" service for youth offenders and their families in West Auckland similar to a contract it had for 100 families in South Auckland.
"We can drop youth offending by 30 percentage points, but we need to have the right to transfer resources and develop the type of programme we have and apply it," he said.
"We are all tied to contracts which are five to six years old and are no longer where the market is."
