Rauhī Mokopuna: Tamariki-development informed practice for family violence workforces

Lead organisation:

Brainwave Trust Aotearoa

Rauhī Mokopuna is a workforce development initiative helping kaimahi across family violence services understand the potential impacts of violence and adversity on tamariki development, and apply that understanding in everyday practice. The name carries two connected meanings – to gather together, and to tend, foster and protect – describing both what the project does and what it is for: bringing a workforce together to strengthen the care of mokopuna.

Grounded in Te Pā Tū Rangatira, Brainwave's mātauranga Māori framework for mokopuna wellbeing, the project will co-design a tamariki development reflective practice tool using an AI-supported voice capture platform and a series of wānanga with partner organisations across the sector. This sits within a wider kaupapa structure, expressed through the metaphor of a whare, which holds the learning and organisational conditions that sustain the practice over time.

The project will be piloted with organisations spanning specialist family violence response, social services and mental health and addiction, reaching hundreds of frontline kaimahi directly, with the resource made openly available to the wider family violence workforce nationally beyond the funded period. Outcomes include stronger practitioner confidence and consistency in recognising and responding to the developmental impact of violence on tamariki, and improved retention in a workforce under sustained pressure.

Rauhī Mokopuna is innovative in building a workforce tool from mātauranga Māori outward rather than adding cultural content afterward, using practitioner voice to shape content before it is built, and creating a resource designed to sustain itself through a low-cost licensing model.