Transcript
ACC, Le Va and Synergia conducted research for the last two years to understand the issue better.
They found that while young Pasifika people are more than three times as likely to experience family violence and twice as likely to experience sexual abuse than Pakeha children, they're less likely to report it.
Since the launch of Atu Mai two weeks ago, Le Va's CEO, Monique Faleafa says they've received a flood of calls from people wanting to share their stories and seek help.
"There is certainly a sense of urgency for this programme. We know that the statistics aren't pretty and to sort of make matters worse, most sexual harm and family violence experienced by Pasifika young people are not reported to police."
Inspector Peter Stokes is the National Strategic Pacific Advisor in the Police...
"When you compare our population to the number of call outs and that, you know, we have more calls to Pacific people than we should be accepting. It's something that's been going on for a long time and part of the problem is that it's not so much the calls that we're getting, it's the calls that we don't get."
Ms Faleafa is hopeful that that's going to change because of the strong reaction they've received from the Pacific community since.
"I think we're gearing up for quite a big tidal flow of people standing up - either standing up and protecting people they know are vulnerable or reaching out for help themselves."
According to New Zealand police, pacific people are five times more likely to have actions taken against them for assault and almost half of those perpetrators are under the age of 25.
Inspector Stokes welcomes the programme.
"We have noticed that there has been a gap. You know, we've been trying to find organisations that could work in this space. Particularly those who have that cultural awareness that can be part of a treatment package so we're really pleased to see organisations coming in that can do this."
New Zealand has one of the highest rates of violence in the developed world and while Pasifika people constitute around 7 percent of the population, they make up 12 percent of all ACC assault-related claims.
ACC's Violence Portfolio Manager and Injury prevention, Mike McArthy, says the programme aims to long term reduction of those figures.
"We would expect to see in the short term an increase in certain areas of our claims data, and in this case we're focussing on the violence statistics. So we would expect to see an increase in that through highlighting the accessibility and that we want people to come forward."
Right, so an increase because there's an increase of reporting?
That's right."
Mr McArthy says ideally Atu Mai will bridge the gap between Pasifika people and the organisations that are there to help.
"You know, cultural competence and cultural understanding are challenges that we continue to face everyday in our work and it's very important that we consider those sensitivies and barriers."
"We need to turn the narrative around to ultimately see the type of communities that we actually want to see and show what can be achieved."
While recognising it as a complex problem, those behind Atu Mai hope the programme can foster an intergenerational shift away the culture of violence.
