RESOURCES FOR

CURRENT AND POTENTIAL CLIENTS

Local and regional organisations

National helplines

  • 0800 787 797
    www.alcoholdrughelp.org.nz

  • 0800 456 450

  • 0800 611 116

  • 0800 HeyBro (439 276)

  • 0800 543 354

  • 0800 163 344

  • The Bright Sky app provides safe, practical support and information for people concerned about family violence, or worried about the safety of themselves, or someone they care about. Please only download this app if you feel it is safe for you to do so-see our story on the app warnings.

National organisations

Central Government

  • This is a website developed by the Ministry for Social Development that offers easy access and relevant information for people seeking support for family violence in New Zealand. Those worried about safety in their relationship or their supporters can understand their situation better and find pathways to immediate help.

  • www.occ.org.nz

  • www.corrections.govt.nz

  • In Your Hands is a website by Ministry for Social Development made for people using violence and looking to change their behaviour. It is also for people supporting people who use violence. It has been created alongside family violence experts, frontline workers, and people with lived experience. Giving information to people who use violence can help them understand their experience and how to change, helping lower the barriers to them seeking help.

  • www.justice.govt.nz

  • www.orangatamariki.govt.nz

  • www.sexualviolence.victimsinfo.govt.nz

Rainbow Community

  • www.kahukura.co.nz

  • 0800 688 5463
    Can help you find Rainbow groups near you

  • 0800 044 334
    How to get help for sexual harm

Helpful tools

Our clinicians use a variety of tools in every programme to help clients make lifelong behaviour change. We know clients who take these tools and keep them close long after they have left RISE, referring to them as they move through the ongoing process of change. Whether it is a breathing exercise that will keep you calm in a stressful moment or a scale to help you identify how angry you are getting, these tools will help you manage your emotions in a healthy way.

Click here to view, print, and download our helpful tools.

“Thanks so much for the help/support this year. You guys do
an awesome job. Especially when you give it to me straight.

I don’t wanna hear it but know it’s all true and it’s slowly
making me a better person. Thanks again.”

Te Whare Tapa Whā

The Māori health model, Te Whare Tapa Whā, is everywhere in RISE’s work with clients. While it is a health model, working with people to make life changes is improving overall health. Developed by Mason Durie, Te Whare Tapa Whā are the four cornerstones of Māori health:

  • taha wairua (the spiritual dimension)

  • taha tinana (physical health)

  • taha whānau (family health)

  • taha hinengaro (mental health)

Should one of the four dimensions be missing or in some way damaged, a person, or a collective may become ‘unbalanced’ and subsequently unwell.

Read more

Taha wairua

Taha wairua, the spiritual dimension is a pillar of Te Whare Tapa Whā. The spiritual essence of a person is their life force. This determines who people are as individuals and as a collective, where we have come from, and where we are going. A traditional Māori analysis of physical manifestations of illness will focus on the wairua/spirit to determine whether damage here could be a contributing factor. In our work with clients, we enquire about this aspect of a person’s life and how they can draw on it and make use of it on their journey.


Taha tinana

The Te Whare Tapa Whā pillar that allows for the capacity for physical growth and development is taha tinana/physical health. According to the Te Whare Tapa Whā, our physical ‘being’ supports our essence and shelters us from the external environment.

In a traditional Māori approach, the inclusion of the wairua, the role of the whānau and the balance of the hinengaro/mind are as important as the tinana.

Taha whānau

Taha whānau is family health. How whānau can contribute to the ongoing journey toward safety and living violence-free is fundamental to how we operate our programmes. It is the centre of our work with clients. And as one of the four pillars of Te Whare Tapa Whā, it provides clients the strength to be who they are at their core. Whānau for everyone helps link us to our extended family, our community, our ancestors, our ties with the past, the present and the future.

Taha hinengaro

The health of the mind, or tapa hinengaro, is the final pillar of Te Whare Tapa Whā and it is one of the key parts of our work with clients. The capacity to communicate, to think, and to feel - mind and body - are inseparable. Whether it is getting to a place of courage to engage with us or slowly re-learning how to think of oneself as valuable, there is much work here.

Thoughts, feelings and emotions are integral components of the body and soul and you can imagine the courage it takes for a person to share their thoughts and to examine their feelings and to learn to re-shape their behaviours.

Everyday Human Rights

The list of Everyday Human Rights includes the most basic right: you have the right to judge your own behaviour, thoughts and emotions and to take the responsibility for their initiation, and consequences upon yourself. You are in charge of yourself.

Use the list of Everyday Human Rights as a guide for your life and your family’s life.

Videos

When violent people come to RISE, the are in the early stages of a change cycle. In 1983, a model was developed to document it: The Cycle of Change. It describes the stages one can expect to go through when modifying any kind of behaviour, including violent behaviour. Most family violence specialists use it in their work. We use it in our Non-Violence Programme. Mark Banks, a RISE Clinician and co-facilitator of the Programme, talks through the Cycle of Change as he answers the question, do stopping violence courses work?


RISE’s Dr Victor MacGill takes to the camera occasionally to offer advice and help through short videos. Click on the most recent videos and the button below will take you to our YouTube Channel for the full library.

Have you tried to talk reasonably with someone who's angry? Have you been angry and tried to get your point across, but it hasn't worked? Understand how to regulate your emotions and physical responses in the moment so that you can relate better to the person you want to talk to and have a reasonable conversation that actually achieves your goals.

Our brain evolved over millions of years in layers one on top of another. Each layer got more and more complex adding new skills and abilities. When all the layers are working well, we make our best decisions, but when we are faced with tension, conflict, and stress we often tend to shut down our higher layers so we don’t get overwhelmed by everything that is happening.

Dr Victor MacGill talks through these layers and how you can identify and cope with managing them.

Research

RISE has participated in various local research studies and you can find final reports and analyses of these studies here.

-read more-

Systems based analysis

RISE’s Victor MacGill PhD has written a pre-print publication (not yet peer reviewed) titled A Systems-Based Analysis of Human Violence. The publication is free to access on the ScienceOpen website and any qualified people can peer review the paper for full acceptance.

Abstract

As much as we try to live without violence, it remains embedded in our lives. Every day on the television, we see the destruction caused by our violence. Explanations of the causes of violence have typically been biological, psychological, or social, each revealing part of the story. This paper uses the author’s Dynamics of Life model to demonstrate underlying dynamical tensions that enable life processes that manifest in different ways at each of the three levels. The levels then interact with each other.

We analyse the tensions to reveal how abuse and violence arise in human behaviour. The biological level is based around the body and how it is used to change situations. The psychological is about learning to regulate emotion and improve thinking patterns. The first part of the social level looks at two-people dynamics before exploring societal patterns and how structural violence arises. A list of strategies to help reduce levels of abuse and violence follows, and the paper ends with a summary and conclusion.

Read A Systems-Based Analysis of Human Violence

Where’s Harry, 2017

Where’s Harry is a client centred approach to supporting men who have been sexually abused as children. The Working Together More Fund was established to support community agencies wanting to work together to achieve better outcomes for their collaborative initiatives. RISE (SVS-Living Safe at the time of this study) and the Male Room Inc applied for and were successful in receiving a grant supporting their work in developing a pathway for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Authors are Dee Cresswell of RISE; David Mitchell and Philip Chapman of Male Room, Nelson; and Ken Clearwater, Advisor from MSSAT.

Read Where's Harry

Men at Work, 2014

Read the final document on the research of men's views on a stopping violence programme. The aim of the project was to collect data from men who had completed or were completing the RISE’s (then SVS – Living Safe) ‘Stopping Violence‘ group to surface their views on:

  • the effectiveness of the ‘stopping violence’ group

  • how RISE/SVS – Living Safe’s services could be further developed

  • strategies that would be useful in reducing the incidence of family violence in our community

This was a collaborative project between RISE, Public Health (Nelson Marlborough District Health Board), and the Bachelor of Nursing Programme at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. The researchers were David Mitchell and Philip Chapman.

Read Men at Work

The Girl’s Project, 2011

RISE completed a two-year research project in 2011 on girls aggression and called The Girl’s Project - An investigation of young women’s violent and anti-social behaviour. The researcher was Dr. Donna Swift. Download a copy of this research report below or request a hard copy from RISE at a cost of $20.00.

Read The Girl's Project