Sample Policy: Responding to Customers who Experience FV – created by Shine & Good Shepherd NZ

Shine collaborated with Good Shepherd New Zealand economic harm experts to create this sample policy earlier this year. It can be adapted for organisations as an excellent starting point for supporting a safe and fair response to customers who experience family violence.  
 
Customer-facing organisations are likely to encounter customers who experience family violence. Often the most visible signs relate to a customer’s experience of economic abuse, which is a form of family violence. Having a policy like this is an important first step towards supporting frontline employees to respond safely to these customers, and towards embedding ‘safety by design’ so that products and services are designed to prevent them being weaponised as tools of economic abuse.  
 
In addition to using the sample policy as a starting point for creating new policy, we encourage businesses to work with Shine and Good Shepherd NZ to review their draft policies.  
 
The sample policy is linked from the DVFREE webpage under the heading DVFREE Policy Consultation.