Tackling family and sexual violence – a framework for change.

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Client
Accident Compensation Commission
Skills
Systems Thinking, evaluation, strategy

Faced with increasing claims related to family and sexual violence, and aware that an effective response was going to require a deep understanding of the factors driving violence for young people ACC requested Synergia to develop a ‘Framework for Change’ to guide its thinking about its investments to reduce family and sexual violence amongst young people. 

The Framework for Change
The Framework for Change

Utilising a systems approach, Synergia combined interviews and workshops with experts in the field with a review of current literature to develop a framework that detailed the complex web of protective and risk factors driving violence affecting young people.

The dynamics of  violence affecting young people was described using ‘Causal Loop Diagrams’, which provided a coherent theory of change to help people better understand the interactions between a range of factors, from both an individual and a community perspective. In addition, the Framework also described the contextual factors that would need to be taken into account if any intervention was to have a chance of positively affecting the violence experienced by young people.

The Framework was also supported with a process description describing how it could be used to design and evaluate initiatives being proposed and funded by the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).

ACC has subsequently commissioned Synergia to apply the Framework to support the design, monitoring and evaluation of a large multi-year initiative focusing on family and sexual violence amongst Pacific youth, and to assess the business case for a programme using social media to create a place where people could share their stories about kindness, compassion and empathy and create an action plan to promote wellbeing for Aucklanders.