Commissioning for the prevention of sexual violence and family violence
October 2025
The Auckland Co-Design Lab
This innovation brief is written to support public sector teams that are involved with commissioning for the prevention of sexual violence and family violence.
Commissioning is one of the most significant tools available to governments for leveraging change at scale. This brief contributes to the evidence base for how more effective commissioning of sexual violence and family violence prevention can be achieved in practice.
This brief begins with a short overview of the context surrounding the prevention of sexual violence and family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand and the shifts in how it is being approached as the evidence builds. We highlight the potential of commissioning to activate change at scale.
We then discuss key factors in the landscape of sexual violence and family violence prevention that impact the effectiveness of investment and commissioning. These factors span the framing of prevention, alignment with Kaupapa Māori, how the workforce has been defined, historic approaches to funding, and operating in the context of trauma. These factors are surfaced and discussed with the aim of strengthening the design of future prevention investment.
In the second part of this brief, Te Tokotoru, is used to map the issues and how they might be addressed.
We then build on these insights through a place-based lens, exploring what this approach offers for more effective investment in sexual violence and family violence. Finally this analysis is translated into five strategies and related actions for commissioning that together can support more effective prevention investment.
