These tools include questions to help you think clearly about the situation of violence, what information to share with people who are helping, and how to keep information up-to-date. It helps you think about how to safely keep track of and share information without repeating your story over and over.
Key Questions
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What is going on?
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What kind of harm, abuse or violence is happening?
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Who is being harmed? (is it you alone, or others as well, like your children)
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Who is causing the harm?
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What can be done?
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Are you in danger?
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These tools consider risks, danger and safety plans. Violence of any form can cause harm. Taking action to respond to violence can cause new risks and dangers. This topic includes tools to figure out how to stay safe or reduce harm during the intervention.
Key Questions
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What are the risks and dangers now?
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Who is at risk?
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What is the level of risk? None, low, medium, high, emergency?
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What are the risks and dangers if you take no action?
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Who needs to be protected?
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Who can help with safety? What safety networks are there?
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What are the next steps?
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This approach brings people together to overcome violence, even if it is only a couple of people. The tools guide you through who can help, what they can do to help, and how to bring them in to help. The tools help work out who might get in the way or make things worse, and who might help if they have some support.
Key Questions
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Who can help?
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Who can get in the way?
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Who is a good person to support you?
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Who is a good person to support the person causing harm?
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Who could be a better ally with some support?
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What kind of help do they need and who can give it?
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These tools help your group work out the outcomes your group wants. They separate goals that may be wishful or beyond your control, from those that are possible and in line with your values.
Key Questions
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What do you want?
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What do you not want?
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What can you do to move towards your goals?
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Does the wider group share the same goals?
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What can you do as a group to move towards these goals?
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Are these goals realistic and within your control?
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How can you state these goals as concrete steps?
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These tools guide people who have caused harm and their community to recognise, stop and take responsibility for their violence. As the person who has been hurt by their violence, you may be interested in these tools, or may want nothing to do with this part of a process. None of these questions should be turned back on you, they are for the person who caused harm.
Key Questions
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What attitudes and behaviours led to the harms?
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Who directly caused the harms?
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Who allowed these harms to happen, even if they did not directly commit them?
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Who did they harm? (just you, or others, like your children?)
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What are the results of these harms, even if unintended?
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What and who does the person causing harm care about?
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What people can influence and support change?
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Can the group use care and connection to promote change?
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What specific changes do you want to see?
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What are some specific ways to know that change has happened?
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How can the group support long-lasting change?
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Working well together is an important and challenging part of an intervention. These tools can help with communicating, making decisions and sharing information.
Key Questions
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Who can work together?
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Does everyone know and agree with the goals?
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What are their roles?
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How will the group communicate and co-ordinate?
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How will the group make decisions?
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These tools check that the intervention is going well, that the group has goals and is moving towards them. This step includes tools for individuals to check that they are doing their best to achieve the goals.
Key Questions
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Is the group ready to take the next step?
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How did it go?
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What did the group achieve?
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Did the group celebrate their achievements (even the small ones)?
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What needs to change?
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What is the next step?
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Topics to help
There are 8 topics with information and tools. You don’t need to read all these topics, and you don’t need to be involved in everything that happens. This website contains a lot of information and resources—don’t be overwhelmed. Focus on what is most urgent and useful to you.
If you have a specific goal, like finding people who can help you or getting the person who hurt you to take responsibility for what they did, find the topic about that goal. If you find there are gaps you need to fill in, like getting clear about what happened or what you want, you can go back to those sections as you need.
This list gives you an idea of where to find the information and tools you want on this website.
People who have been harmed
Real justice is a system “which helps us deal with wrong by re-enforcing what is right, which helps us deal with hurt by dealing with those who are hurt, by helping us deal with injustice by re-defining what is injustice and what is just in our terms.”
Moana Jackson
“Experiencing harm is not about being strong or weak, experiencing harm just is. It’s what we choose to do about it that’s important.”
When you are first thinking about responding to or stopping violence, which can be at any time in the violent situation. It may have been a one-off or been going on for days, months or years. It may have happened long ago or recently, or it might still be happening.
Getting Started:
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Can be started by anyone—the person hurt, a friend, whanaunga, neighbour, co-worker or community member, or the person doing harm.
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Often involves topics like naming the violence, thinking about what you want, finding people and resources to help, and thinking about what can get in the way.
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Getting started steps can include:
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Looking for help on the internet and finding this website
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Talking to a trusted friend about the violence and brainstorming what to do
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Telling a family member about the violence and asking for help
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Thinking about violence that happened long ago and deciding to do something
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The person who hurt you may talk to you about wanting to do something about their harm, or needing help to stop.
You can get started at any time:
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A pattern of violence becomes clear and you want to do something before it gets worse
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A pattern of violence has become so dangerous that something needs to be done
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Whānau, friends, neighbours, co-workers or community members have found out about the violence and want to do something
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The police or child welfare have been called
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You are finally out of crisis and can think clearly about taking action
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You have found this website and realise you have more support to take action
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You are ready to do something.
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When you’ve done the ground work and you’re getting ready to take action to respond to, stop or prevent violence.
Planning/preparation:
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Can involve bringing more people in to help
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Can involve setting goals, thinking about what help you need and what you want from the person who hurt you
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Planning/Preparation steps can include:
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Figuring out who else can help
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Holding a meeting of people who might be able to help
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Thinking about risks and dangers as the intervention starts, and figuring out a safety plan
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Making a schedule of people who can stay with you for support and safety
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Thinking about who needs to know about the violence so children are protected at school, friend’s homes or in care
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Preparing an ‘accountability plan’ for the person doing harm, including what harm they have done, people who can support change, your requests of them, and consequences if requests are not met.
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When you take action to respond to, stop or prevent violence.
Taking Action:
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Is a deliberate step or set of steps
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Can be carried out by anyone—the person who was hurt; a friend, whanaunga, neighbour, co-worker or community member; or the person doing harm
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Can include supporting people who have been hurt, dealing with people doing harm, bringing people together for support, growing the understanding and responses of friends, whanaunga and community members
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Taking Action steps can include:
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Someone staying with you at your home for support and safety, or staying at someone else’s house if home is not safe
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Contacting the person doing harm for a meeting
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Holding meetings with the person doing harm
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The person doing harm taking steps to be responsible for the harms they have caused
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Holding a community meeting about the violence and your group’s steps to respond to it
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Going to a child's school to talk about what is happening, and asking the school to provide safety for the child
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Someone going to your whānau to talk about whānau violence and how they can be better allies to you.
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To make sure action steps are working towards the values and goals of the intervention; to check if changes are needed; to tell whether new events or changes have come into the picture; to tell how close the intervention is to its goal; to tell whether the intervention needs to be paused, sped up, changed or brought to a close.
Following-Up:
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Is a deliberate process after each action step, at particular times or at the end of an intervention
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Can involve everyone or a smaller group of people
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Is an important part of keeping on track
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Can involve plans to respond if violence happens again
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Can involve a process for checking in to see how things are going after an intervention ends
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Should happen even if action steps are never taken or things don’t go as planned
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Following up steps include:
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Checking in with people who were going to take an action to see what happened
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Checking that the actions and results of actions met your values, goals and safety needs
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Checking that the actions and results of an entire intervention process met your values, goals and safety needs.
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Are you being hurt or have you been hurt by physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, financial abuse or other harmful behaviour?
The person hurting you could be a partner, parent or other family member, they might be a flatmate, friend, neighbour or co-worker, or someone else.
If you have found this website by yourself, and you are working out what to do without support, there are tools here that can help work out what is most urgent for you (see the topics below).
If you already have lots of support, for example if you’re part of a community or whānau that wants to do something about the violence, this website can help you work out a plan for your situation.
Either way, a good place to start is reading the Basics about violence section to help you understand what is going on. The Basics about violence intervention section shares lessons Creative Interventions have learned from responding to violence. Interpersonal violence is complicated. It takes time to understand it and work out what to do.
Online safety
Is it safe to read this website where you are? If you need to quickly hide that you are looking at this site, the quick exit button will close this page and take you to Stuff, a news website.
Your computer will normally keep a history of pages you have looked at. Many browsers will delete that list with the shortcut ctrl+shift+del. There are detailed instructions for most browsers at Computer Hope.
If the person hurting you knows enough about computers, the safest place for you to read this may be at a library, at a friend or whanaunga's house or at work.
Introducing the model
Every response to violence is different, this isn’t a step-by-step model to follow. Your intervention (what you do to respond to violence) might be simple and short term, or longer and more involved. You might only need one or two tools to work out what you are going to do, or you might work through all of the topics and tools.
You don’t need to read everything. Find the tools or information that help you.
The purpose of this site is to support you to work out what to do and how to do it. If it isn’t working for you, or if it is making things worse, you can stop at any point—even if you have asked people to help you. Once other people are involved, it can be harder for you to control what happens, so thinking about who can help is very important (see Who can help).
You may want to print out some sections or tools to read or fill out later—if so, think about a safe place to keep them. You may want to find someone who will go through this with you. The information and tools on this site may be upsetting—think about when a good time is to read it and how you can look after yourself afterwards if needed.
We’ve noticed that responses to violence have four main phases, with a slightly different focus at each phase. We’ve arranged the questions that people want help with into 8 topics.
Phases of an intervention
This website might help you if you:
☐ Want to respond to, stop or prevent violence (violence intervention)
☐ Look for solutions within your family, friend network, neighbourhood, church, sports club, workplace or other community group or organisation
☐ Can think of at least one other person who can support you without judging you and may be willing to help.
If you checked all the boxes, you may be ready to continue with this approach. If you aren’t sure about any of these, see if the FAQ or one of the real stories answers your questions.
The Values Checklist will show you whether you share values with this approach.
Creative Interventions developed this model to end violence, and to lead to healthier ways of being in community with each other. The short version of the values that guide this approach is in the Checklist below (a longer version is in the Basics section). Do these fit with you or your group?
You can list your own values or kaupapa under Values to guide your intervention (in your own words), Guiding Questions if another set of values fits your group better. The principles of Communities againse Rape and Abuse (CARA) and the kaupapa of Te Wānanga o Raukawa are examples of other sets of values.
You can download these files, adapt them to your group, and share them with people as they join.
The following values guide us in our work together to respond to, stop or prevent violence (violence intervention). Think about what these values mean to you. We hope that you will agree to these values and let them guide your involvement in this intervention.
If you don’t agree, think about what changes you want. Can you include these changes? Or do they show disagreement that needs more discussion. Be clear about changes you want and what this means for your involvement.I understand and can agree to the following values:
☐ Collectivity or community responsibility (working together as a group)
☐ Holism (considering the potential wellbeing of all people involved)
☐ Safety and risk-taking (recognising that safety sometimes requires risk-taking)
☐ Accountability (taking appropriate levels of responsibility for ending violence)
☐ Transformation (working towards positive change for all)
☐ Flexibility and creativity (can adjust to new challenges and opportunities)
☐ Patience (accepting that change can take time)
☐ Building on what we know (building on people’s values, experience and strengths)
☐ Sustainability (creating ways to make changes that can last a long time)
☐ Expanding our work (making changes and lessons that can help others)
☐ Others:
We don’t expect that your values and ours will be a complete match. Different language may make more sense to your group.
Use these questions to think about the values (individual or group) you want to guide your planning, preparation and actions to deal with violence. If your group can’t agree on a set of values, you may find it hard to work together (see How do you work together as a team).
Guiding questions:
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What is important to you?
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At times when you have tried to change your own behaviour, what has been helpful? What has made it hard?
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What are some guiding principles that have helped in your life?
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What are some values that you hold even if they have been difficult or challenging to keep up?
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What values do you think will lead to lasting positive change?
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You can write a set of values using this checklist. If helpful, compare your values with the Creative Interventions list, the CARA list and the Wānanga kaupapa. Which ones would you like to keep?
Our Values
The following values guide us in our work together to respond to, stop or prevent violence (violence intervention). Think about what these values mean to you. We hope that you will agree to these values and let them guide your involvement in this intervention.
If you don’t agree, think about what changes you want. Can you include these changes? Or do they show disagreement that needs more discussion. Be clear about changes you want and what this means for your involvement.
Our Values
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Values
If you want to do something about a situation of violence (past, present or future), the FAQs and Basics sections explain how violence works and how this approach stops violence, and the Real stories section has examples of people using this model. Start by reading those sections if you have time (the About section has more background to the model and organisations involved).
If you want to quickly check if this model might work for you without reading those sections, the following tools may help.