Despite significant progress in addressing family and domestic violence, one group of Australians continues to be forgotten.
Children and young people are falling through the cracks, with no dedicated services to provide them with advice or support to escape family violence.
“Our system still largely views children as extensions of their protective parent in family violence situations. Young Australians are telling us it’s unclear where to find support that’s relevant to them,” Dr Chelsea Tobin, CEO of Safe Steps, said.
Safe Steps is Victoria’s only 24/7 family violence response centre. It provides family and domestic violence information and support, safety planning and risk assessment, and access to crisis accommodation. It also delivers part of the national 1800 RESPECT support service. On average, Safe Steps handles around 130,000 calls every year to support people fleeing violence – this can be up to 400 calls a day. Last year, Safe Steps provided 33,000 nights of crisis accommodation for people who were not safe to go home.
In a new documentary – Unanswered Calls – young people have bravely shared their experiences of family and domestic violence, including: “I also needed someone to sit me down and tell me I wasn’t the problem, because throughout my whole experience, that’s all I’ve ever felt, that I was the problem.”
Data shows 40 per cent of Australians under 16 years of age are exposed to family and domestic violence.
Safe Steps is calling for a dedicated, national response that works with young people to co-design a future where they have the supports they need, at the time and in the places they need it – particularly on the digital platforms they use.
“More than 10 years after the murder of Luke Batty shocked the nation, this documentary highlights how we have built response systems for adults experiencing family violence, but not children.”
“We need dedicated national services for youth, to ensure they have somewhere to turn to escape family violence. We need to ensure their voices are heard,” Dr Tobin said.
Safe Steps has led the production of Unanswered Calls, which shines a light on the shocking first-hand experiences of young people experiencing family violence.
“This is not just a film, it’s a wake-up call…and we need the call answered.
“Young people are in critical stages of cognitive, emotional, and social development, making them particularly vulnerable to the effects of trauma. If not addressed, this can become intergenerational trauma,” Dr Tobin said.
The film features interviews with young people with lived experiences of family violence, as well as family violence prevention advocate, Rosie Batty AO; Commissioner for Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence, Micaela Cronin; and Liana Buchanan, Victoria’s Principal Commissioner for Children and Young People.
As Ms Cronin states in the film: “If we are going to see changes in domestic and family violence in a generation, we need to be thinking about how we respond to children and young people differently and better”.
Ms Buchanan said that “while we have such stark gaps in services, and where too often the services responding to family violence are not identifying what a child has been through and what that child needs, then we are letting these children down in devastating ways”.
