Lack of meaningful participation or partnerships with disabled people In July 1987 a group of disabled activist women met with the New Zealand Ministry of Women’s Affairs to discuss issues associated with disabled women. Among the many issues that were raised in the consultation was violence against disabled women. The report of the meeting states: …women with disabilities are particularly susceptible to violence and sexual abuse. There is a lot of consciousness raising work to be done to get people to realise that women and children with disabilities do get abused. …. There should be funding made available to enable refuge and rape crisis personnel to work with women with disabilities as paid consultants to work out appropriate ways of assisting abused women…160. Nothing happened in response to this consultation, nor is there evidence that any further consultation with disabled women occurred for many years. A number of these women, 34 years later, are still actively raising the same concerns and attempting to use the existing structures to initiate a prevention and service response at government level. As a consequence of this on-going lobbying and activism, primarily by disabled women, there is an increasing consciousness of the high rates of violence against tāngata whaikaha Māori, Deaf and disabled women, men and children, and government has started to engage. However, despite the above, there is still (2021) little interaction between sectors and few accessible sexual or domestic violence services, or services with staff who have expertise to work with disabled people. Disappointment has also been expressed that initiatives evaluated as making a positive difference to protecting disabled people from violence have been discontinued or remain small in scale. Acting now for a violence and abuse free future 45