NEWS
ANROWS, DFSV Commission to bring young people and ministers together to end domestic and family violence
MEDIA RELEASE | 10 DECEMBER 2025
Children and young people, including young victim-survivors, will share their unique perspectives with key ministers in a domestic, family and sexual violence roundtable event.
The roundtable will be co-hosted by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) and the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence (DFSV) Commission.
What: Children and young people’s ministerial roundtable
When: Wednesday 10 December 2025
Where: Sydney, NSW
The event will bring young people face-to-face with Social Services Minister, the Hon Tanya Plibersek MP and Assistant Minister for Social Services and Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, the Hon Ged Kearney MP.
ANROWS CEO, Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine, and DFSV Commissioner Micaela Cronin will co-host the roundtable, which will comprise children and young people from across Australia with a range of experience and perspectives, as well as the most senior Government Ministers in the DFSV sector.
The roundtable builds on growing calls from children and young people to have their voices heard heard in conversations around domestic and family violence – as well as have greater access to decision makers.
Last week, ANROWS partnered with the arts and social change organisation Big hART to host an impact screening of the documentary, It Starts With Us at Parliament House. The documentary follows young people from Frankston North, Victoria, as they participate in an arts-based prevention program designed to reduce the risk of violence occurring in the future.
ANROWS CEO Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine joined program participants Bailey and Xiao for an interview with ABC Radio Canberra shortly before the screening:
“What we’re seeing from the evidence is that we haven’t centred children and young people in that [prevention] work and then you listen to Bailey and Xiao and you listen to them in this film and they are giving us the recipe,” Dr Boyd-Caine told the ABC.
“They’re talking about being seen; they’re talking about meeting them where they’re at. It’s on the rest of us to listen and to really respond in ways that are going to be effective.”
In May, ANROWS also hosted a groundbreaking conference designed to centre children and young people in domestic and family violence conversations.
Conference attendees heard from young people who 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 ingredients in policy and practice reform, not optional ones.
Based on the evidence from research, ANROWS supports the need for children and young people to be heard. Their experiences of violence are often overlooked by the very services and systems designed to keep them safe.
Current responses to domestic, family and sexual violence have also not been developed with children in mind. As Dr Boyd-Caine said in her opening statement to the conference:
“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.”
The Australian National Research Agenda to End Violence Against Women and Children, developed by ANROWS, calls for researchers, policy actors and service designers alike to “listen to children when they are children” to “better design system responses and services to accommodate and appropriately respond to their needs”.
Failure to include children and young people, or relying on caregivers and practitioner participants as proxies, can lead to the views of children and young people being misrepresented and their agency compromised.
ANROWS has produced more than 20 research reports on children and young people’s unique experiences of domestic, family and sexual violence. These reports were published over five years, from 2019 to 2024, and include more than 130 policy and practice recommendations.
A 2024 guide produced by ANROWS, In their own right, details the common policy recommendations made across the ANROWS reports. Policy actors at all levels of the Australian Government, practice leaders and advocates can use it to create and advocate for more consistent and effective policy responses for children and young people.
Youth advisory groups are becoming a common feature across jurisdictions. The December 10 roundtable occurs against proposed policy reforms happening Australia-wide, as well as open consultations to which ANROWS is submitting, including the Parliamentary ‘Inquiry into the relationship between domestic, family and sexual violence and suicide’.
The Commission has previously held a Youth Round table co-convened with campaigner around consent, Chanel Contos, and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.
Please note: Media may not attend the roundtable itself. However, please contact the ANROWS media team below with any queries and to request an interview with the CEO, Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine.
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Media contact:
Emmagness Ruzvidzo,
Media and Communications Manager, ANROWS
E: Emmagness.Ruzvidzo@anrows.org.au
M: 0468 322 800
About ANROWS
Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) was established by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments under Australia’s first National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children (2010–2022). As an ongoing partner to the National Plan, ANROWS continues to build, strengthen and translate the evidence base that informs the current National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children (2022–2032).
With more than 150 research projects led, commissioned or contributed to, ANROWS delivers targeted evidence to inform practice, policy, and systems reform. We engage closely with victim-survivors, communities, service providers, governments and researchers to ensure our work reflects lived experience and supports collective action.
ANROWS is a not-for-profit company jointly funded by the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments. We are a registered harm prevention charity and deductible gift recipient, governed by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC).