Vine Quick Reads: 31 July 2025

Vine Quick Reads: 31 July 2025

Welcome to our Quick Reads format. Each week we share selected news bites relevant to family violence and sexual violence in Aotearoa.

New report on the financial barriers to exiting abusive relationships

Good Shepherd have released a new report, Barriers to Exit: How financial barriers prevent women from leaving abusive relationships (2025). It combines their own client research with academic and cross-sector findings to illustrate financial challenges facing women when they try to leave an abusive relationship. They have developed seven recommendations for businesses and government to better support victim-survivors and address the complex challenges caused by family violence economic abuse.

New website, resources for Supported Decision-Making

Whaimana | Support My Decisions is a website designed to help family, whānau, friends, supporters, carers, advocates, and service providers to support disabled people and tāngata whaikaha Māori to make their own choices. The website contains information and resources for both those who want support making their own decisions and those helping others make decisions. The website was sponsored by Whaikaha | Ministry of Disabled People and was developed by an advisory group of disabled people and tāngata whaikaha Māori, people with lived experience, family and whānau, and representatives from government and non-government organisations. For more on the launch, read the media release from Whaikaha.

New publication on climate change and gender-based violence

Spotlight Initiative, a United Nations initiative to end violence against women and girls (VAWG), has recently published Colliding Crises: How the climate crisis fuels gender-based violence (2025). The publication:

• provides an overview of how climate change exacerbates VAWG and offers a quantitative perspective on the scale of impacts;
• sheds light on overlooked forms of violence that threaten progress on climate change;
• draws the connection between ending VAWG and effective climate action; and,
• suggests how climate and VAWG actors can better work together.

Let’s Start Asking – Are You OK campaign released for International Friendship Day

The latest installment of Are You OK’s new campaign, Let’s Start Asking, launched on 30 July for International Friendship Day. It encourages New Zealanders to ask the simple question: “Are you OK?” and aims to normalise asking our friends and loved ones this as an act of care and friendship.