Children & young people

Centring children and young people to end domestic, family and sexual violence: Insights from the ANROWS Conference 2025

By ANROWS Media Team

23 JUNE 2025

 

 

Domestic and family violence is often considered a private crisis. But its consequences are deeply public, especially for children and young people.

From 14-16 May 2025, over 800 researchers, practitioners, policymakers and young advocates gathered for the ANROWS Conference under the theme “Listen, learn, act: centring children and young people to end violence”.

The message was clear:  ending domestic, family and sexual violence in a generation hinges on getting it right for those who have the least power – children and young people.

A system never designed for them

Our current responses to domestic, family and sexual violence weren’t built with children in mind. As Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine, CEO of ANROWS, shared in her opening remarks:

“If you think of our response system as a building, children and young people have been left out of the blueprint. They’re walking through a structure never designed for them.”

This absence creates silos, gaps and delays that leave children moving between violent homes and homelessness or struggling to access support after experiencing abuse. When young people do bravely disclose abuse or seek help, the adults around them often feel unsure how to respond effectively, lacking the tools, training or time to respond in ways that are safe and trauma-informed.

As Professor Leah Bromfield highlighted in her opening keynote, our primary system for children experiencing domestic violence is the child protection system which was never designed to respond to the complexity of family violence.

The cost of silence: What the data tells us

The statistics are confronting:

• 62.2% of Australians have experienced at least one form of child maltreatment before the age of 18 (The Australian Child Maltreatment Study 2023).
• 95% of young people accessing one youth homelessness service in 2023 said domestic violence was the reason they had nowhere safe to go (Youth Off The Streets 2023).
• Adults who experienced child maltreatment are 2.8 times more likely to have a mental health disorder than adults who have not experienced child maltreatment (ACMS 2023).
• Young people who use violence are often themselves victims of violence. In one national survey, 89% of young people using violence at home had been subjected to abuse themselves (ANROWS 2022).

These numbers are not abstract. They are lived experiences, and they reflect a system that too often reacts to symptoms, instead of addressing the source.

Young people aren’t waiting to be saved; they’re leading the conversation – often because they feel they must, to ensure other children and young people’s needs are met.

This Conference marked a shift: a shift from talking to young people, to talking with them. Young advocates shared what true safety, healing and justice look like, on their terms.

“Learn to ask the right questions,” said university student and youth advocate with the CREATE Foundation, Ariel. “Instead of ‘Are you safe at home?’ ask, ‘What happens when you get into trouble in this house?’”

Young people called for clear language (not bureaucratic jargon), consistency (not just crisis-driven responses), and authentic inclusion (not tokenism). They urged governments and services to move beyond consultation towards genuine co-design, recognising their lived expertise as essential, not optional.

The long shadow of violence

Childhood experiences of violence can echo across a lifetime, shaping brain development, physical and mental health, relationships, education, housing and future parenting.

Despite this, a linked-data study of children born in Western Australia found a significant six-year delay between when domestic and family violence was first recorded by police or health services, typically around age six, and when children accessed a mental health service, on average around age twelve.

Too often, children are treated as passive witnesses rather than as co-victim-survivors with their own specific healing needs. We must recognise that recovery for young victim-survivors is not a footnote to women’s safety, it’s a foundational part of prevention and healing for individuals, families and communities.

 

What works: Services that listen, adapt and respond with care

Throughout the Conference, speakers highlighted promising practices grounded in trust, agency and voice:

• First Nations-led programs that are deeply embedded in culture, community and self-determination.
• Universal responder training to help every adult play a part in safety.
• Innovative child-rights-based models like legal supports in schools, such as those from West Justice.
• Peer-responder-based models like The Survivor Hub.
• Programs that build healthy relationships between parents, caregivers and children.
• Culturally safe, trauma-informed services for children without protective caregivers.
• Tools to facilitate children’s participation in the Family Law system.
• Trauma-informed co-design processes that centre young people’s voices in systems reform. Healing-focused mental health support that is inclusive and responsive to victims’ needs and available across their lifetime.
• These practices are already making a difference, but we need to scale them up, urgently.

 

Technology: Part of the problem, and part of the solution

Technology was another key theme. While digital spaces can be sites of abuse, they are also where young people live, connect and seek help. For young people, approaches that separate the online and offline worlds are unrealistic for how they live their lives.

Rather than defaulting to fear, the call was for innovation: meeting young people where they are at (online!), ensuring safety by design in apps and platforms, and building shared literacy for children and adults alike around boundaries for tech use (like the use of location tracking). Tech companies, governments, educators, families and service providers all have a role to play in ensuring that digital spaces support, not endanger, young people.

From insight to action: Where we go from here

As Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine said:

“Ending violence is about building safety, dignity and futures. For every life lost, there are thousands more hanging in the balance, and for them, we keep fighting.”

ANROWS is committed to continuing this work by embedding children and young people’s voices in our research, partnerships and knowledge translation, consistently and meaningfully.

The young people of this generation aren’t asking for symbolic change, they’re asking for structural change, and they’re telling us they want to be at the table leading that change.

We must listen and act.

 

Watch the Conference video to hear directly from Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine, Elena Campbell and Dr Georgina Dimopoulos as they discuss how we build systems that recognise, respect and respond to young people’s lived experiences.