RESEARCH SUMMARY The PIPA project: Positive Interventions for Perpetrators of Adolescent violence in the home Key findings and future directions
This is an edited summary of key findings from ANROWS research The PIPA project: Positive interventions for perpetrators of adolescent violence in the home.
Despite underreporting, available data suggest that adolescent violence in the home (AVITH) is a significant issue. Adolescents who use violence are currently subject to legal responses when their use of violence comes to the attention of the legal system, however, there is a gap in knowledge regarding the nature and impact of these responses. The PIPA project explores this gap, and aims to improve evidence regarding:
- legal responses to AVITH as it presents in different justice and service contexts
- the co-occurrence of AVITH with other issues and juvenile offending
- current responses and gaps in service delivery.
IN BRIEF
- Adolescent violence in the home (AVITH) is commonly described as a pattern of violent or abusive behaviour used by an adolescent within their family.
- Adverse childhood events and/or trauma are major contributors to the use of AVITH.
- Families are experiencing AVITH with little service support, such as child protection, education, welfare, housing, counselling, or domestic and family violence services.
- Police, courts, child protection services and social support services are not equipped to respond constructively and holistically to AVITH.
- Service responses are not tailored to the unique situations and vulnerabilities of adolescents who use violence in the home.
Key recommendations
- Invest in the development of expertise in AVITH across the family violence, legal, disability, mental health and other relevant service sectors.
- Ensure that legal responses assess the capacity of young people to understand and comply with civil protection orders, as well as criminal justice processes.
- Ensure that legal responses have access to information about risk across whole-of-family settings.
- Increase focus on early intervention in childhood experience of trauma and violence.
- Develop evidence-based and trauma-informed AVITH-specific interventions that include capacity for outreach, case management and restorative engagement, and build capacity for whole-of-family approaches.
- Support the development of strengths-based and community-led interventions that respond appropriately to AVITH in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, as well as culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.
Invest significant policy attention and inquiry into the disproportionate rates of adolescents with disability coming into contact with justice system settings.
Publication details
ANROWS Research to policy and practice papers are concise papers that summarise key findings of research on violence against women and their children, including research produced under ANROWS’s research program, and provide advice on the implications for policy and practice.
Suggested citation
Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety. (2020). The PIPA project: Positive Interventions for Perpetrators of Adolescent violence in the home (Research to Policy and Practice, 04/2020). Sydney, NSW: ANROWS.