Adult Crisis & Advocacy Support
Adult Crisis Team
Advocates in the Adult Crisis Team work with victims of domestic abuse to help them become safe and stay safe. The work is demanding and at times incredibly complex. The team is kept extremely busy with referrals coming to Shine from a variety of sources, including the North Shore and Auckland City Police, the Auckland District Health Board and Child, Youth & Family. Advocates maintain close working relationships with professionals from these agencies to ensure the best possible outcomes. On the North Shore, staff work onsite at the North Shore Policing Centre.
In Auckland City, the Police and the Auckland District Health Board make urgent referrals to Shine via a dedicated confidential phone line, which operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Advocates respond as quickly as possible by meeting with clients in their own homes, at the hospital, local Police stations, or another safe venue. They support the client by completing a comprehensive risk assessment and helping to create a safety plan. This includes practical support for the client and their children, which could be getting in touch with a lawyer for a Protection Order, assisting the client into safe house or refuge, or simply liaising with other agencies for information to help the client.
After hours, Shine’s Advocates are a team of dedicated volunteers. These volunteers receive extensive classroom and field training, as well as ongoing clinical and peer supervision.
> Find out more about volunteering as a Shine After Hours Callout Advocate.
Response for Maori Families
High Risk Response
After the initial crisis, some clients who have been assessed as being at high risk of serious harm from the offender continue to be supported by our Advocates, with a more intensive level of support. To assist these clients to become safe, close collaboration with other key organisations, including regular meetings, is essential.
Representatives at these meetings include the Police, Child, Youth & Family, Work and Income, Housing New Zealand, Community Probation, and Shine. This model is used in the United Kingdom and has been recommended in numerous child death reviews in New Zealand as a way to reduce serious risk of further harm to adults and children.
Follow-up may also include support while giving evidence in Court, attending Family Group Conferences, writing Special Situation Reports for the Police, installing monitored alarms into victim’s homes and referring on for counselling services.
Staff from all of our frontline services meet weekly to coordinate their approach to high risk cases, and make a particular effort to develop creative solutions for each family we work with. Information from this meeting is then taken to the inter-agency meetings.
CYF Partnership
Safer Families (which is now the North Shore branch of Shine) was the first not-for-profit domestic abuse specialist organisation in the country to base an Advocate at a Child, Youth and Family site office. This model was so successful that it was replicated by Shine. As of last year Shine has replicated the model in all three of the Central Auckland CYF offices, and a Shine Advocate continues to be based at the Takapuna (North Shore) CYF office.
These advocates co-work Child, Youth & Family cases with CYF social workers and help women and children get the help that they need at the time of the crisis. These advocates are also available to statutory social workers at these sites for consultation and advice on cases involving domestic abuse.
First Response Trial
When Police attend a family violence call-out, and there are children in the home, they notify Child, Youth and Family. Each year Child, Youth and Family receives about 51,000 notifications from Police — approximately half of all notifications received by CYF. Most of these notifications receive no follow up as they are classed as ‘low-level’ incidents by CYF.
First Response was launched in November 2009, and was initially trialed in the Grey Lynn, Panmure and Onehunga areas of Auckland up to June 2010. Shine now continues to providing this crisis service for families with children under five who have had Police attend family violence call-outs. This involves a Shine advocate visiting the family as quickly as possible after Police attend an incident, assisting the adult victim to develop a safety plan for themselves and children, making referrals for the adult victim, child and/or perpetrator to appropriate services or programmes, and providing any additional information needed by the family. The Shine advocate makes a referral to Child, Youth and Family if a statutory service is required to achieve safety for the child / children.
> Read 'A Day in the Life of a Shine Advocate' article from Shine's February 2012 newsletter