Child and Young Person MARAM Lived Experience Engagement Project

Project team

Investigators: Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon,  Dr Jasmine McGowan and Dr Rebecca Stewart

Project contact: Kate Fitz-Gibbon, email: kate.fitzgibbon@monash.edu

Funding acknowledgement

We acknowledge the support of the Victorian Government. This research was contracted by the Victorian Government and forms part of the Child and Young Person Victim Survivor focused Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework (MARAM) practice guidance project.

About this research

In Australia, at the national and state level, there is increasing acknowledgement of the need to better respond to children and young people as victim-survivors of family violence in their own right. The recently released National Plan to end Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 embeds this acknowledgement, and there have been calls at the state and national level to ensure that early intervention and system responses are reformed to ensure age-appropriate and child-centred. Despite this, to date there has been minimal research conducted directly with children and young people who have experienced family violence.

A critical component of improving responses to children and young people who experience family violence relates to the development, implementation and effective embedding of child- centred risk identification, assessment and management. Risk assessment practices in Australia, and elsewhere globally, have long been adult-centric. In 2015, the findings of the Coronial Inquest into the killing of Luke Batty recommended improved risk assessment practices, coordinated risk management and safety planning to better ensure that the family violence risks experienced by a child are more readily identified, and responded to more effectively. In the year following the Inquest, the 2016 report of the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence (RCFV) described children as the ‘silent’ victims of family violence and made key recommendations related to the development of child-specific family violence risk assessment practices.

This project privileges the voices of children and young people with lived experience of family violence. It seeks to extend current understandings of how child-specific risk identification, assessment and management practices can best be developed, implemented and embedded across Victoria.

Research findings and outputs

The findings from this project are presented across two research reports:

  • Report 1 presents the findings from the interviews conducted with Victorian children and young people with lived experience of family violence.
  • Report 2 presents the findings from the secondary data analysis.

Report 1 - I believe you: Children and young people’s experiences of seeking help, securing help and navigating the family violence system

This report presents the findings from 17 in-depth interviews conducted with Victorian children and young people, from the ages of 10 to 25, with lived experience of family violence.

The report is organised into five key sections:

  • Section 1 explores young people’s perceptions of wellbeing and keeping safe,
  • Section 2 examines the invisibility of children and young people in system responses to family violence,
  • Section 3 explores the importance of creating space for children and young people to safely disclose their experience of family violence,
  • Section 4 examines the importance of system responses, and
  • Section 5 details young people’s experiences of mandatory reporting requirements in Victoria.

This research seeks to give voice to children and young people who have experienced family violence and have navigated a range of different services and supports across the whole of Victoria’s family violence response system. The findings from this stage of the research are directly relevant to current family violence policy and practice in Victoria specifically, but also other Australian states and territories.

The findings highlight the importance of:

  • system enhancements in terms of system navigation and accessibility,
  • ensuring the availability of child centric spaces,
  • age-appropriate supports and individualised responses,
  • safe and trauma informed practices, and
  • greater consistency in the operation of mandatory reporting requirements.

Each of these recommended system enhancements is essential to ensuring safety, empowerment and better outcomes for children and young people experiencing family violence.

Access a copy of the full report here.


Citation: Fitz-Gibbon, K., McGowan, J. and Stewart, R. (2023) I believe you: Children and young people’s experiences of seeking help, securing help and navigating the family violence system. Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, Monash University, doi: 10.26180/21709562.

Outputs

"I believe you": Examining the importance of building system responses to children as victim-survivors of domestic and family violence in their own right.

Relevant media coverage