Data informs policy, legislation and the
distribution of resources. If tāngata whaikaha
Māori and disabled people are invisible in
data collection their needs and wants will not
be incorporated into government planning,
funding, policy and implementation. This
enables violence and abuse to proliferate
undetected and without consequences.
Lack of a shared language
To facilitate alignment across government, the
disability and violence sectors, and justice/
police services and responses, data collection
and service delivery need to be coherent. This
means all sectors must agree and use a shared
language to describe violence against disabled
women, children and men.
Disabled people must lead the development
of the language and its use in data collection,
data sharing, wider research and service
development. The lack of shared language
extends beyond violence against disabled
people. There is currently no shared language
to describe men’s violence against women and
children, men’s violence against men, or wider
family violence.
Little intersectoral collaboration to address
violence and abuse
[limited opportunities mean] disabled
people generally exchange one oppressive
situation for another”126
Hager (2017)127 investigated why the Aotearoa
violence and disability sectors were not working
together to address the abuse of disabled
women. The answers were complex; however,
primarily the sectors did not recognise each
other as being relevant to each other’s services
and populations. Many participants in both
sectors felt overwhelmed working with their own
issue and did not want the added complication
of addressing violence against disabled
people. Participants felt that underfunding and
consequent understaffing prevented them from
developing expertise about violence against
disabled people or developing relationships with
the other sector (violence or disability).
40
Human Rights Commission
There was an attitude in both sectors that
violence against disabled women was “not our
problem” and/or not a problem at all. Very few
disabled women were seeking support from
violence services and disability services were not
seeing women who disclosed violence or asking
for specialist help. Across both sectors there
was little recognition that this lack of visibility of
abused disabled women was because services
were either not configured to enable disclosure
(disability services) or accessible to women who
required help (violence services).128
There is little evidence of either violence or
disability services having formal agreements or
collaborative relationships with other agencies
to address violence against disabled people.
This means that the support that is available to
disabled people is inconsistent across sites and
regions, as are the agencies that staff members
engage with.129
Low availability, little physical accessibility
and insufficient accessible information
create barriers to access
Research130 identifies there are almost no
mainstream services available that respond
to violence against disabled people. Reasons
include inaccessible facilities, lack of staff
knowledge and skills, and a lack of resources.
When crisis services are available, there are
few provisions for refuge, long term follow-up,
or appropriate accessible counselling/trauma
treatment services. TOAH-NNEST (2016)131
identified that generally, when crisis support has
been offered to disabled people who have been
sexually abused/raped, there are no appropriate
services or supports available in the community
for long-term support either for the abused
person or their family.
There is no information source for disabled
people about which sexual violence services are
physically accessible and which services have
staff with appropriate knowledge and skills
to work with disabled people.132 Few refuge
premises are fully accessible133, in fact most of
them are not accessible for: