Kate Fitz-Gibbon: In Australia’s response to domestic violence, kids remain invisible

Neglect and physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children is widespread in Australia and the lack of an effective crisis response is a national failure.

What has Australia learned since the awful, tragic murder of 11-year-old Luke Batty in 2014?

Not enough – and certainly, not enough has changed in the way we respond to family violence and to protect children from abuse.

A new Australian documentary, “Unanswered calls”, highlights our national failure to develop an effective crisis response for children.

The film’s message, from the Safe Steps crisis service, is powerful but, sadly, not new.

We have long known in Victoria – and elsewhere across Australia – that our systems all too often fail children and young people who experience family violence. And those children are in their thousands.

In 2023, the Australian Child Maltreatment Study found neglect and physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children is widespread in Australia.

The study found that among Australians aged 16–65 years old, 32 per cent experienced physical abuse during childhood; 28.5 per cent experienced sexual abuse during childhood; 31 per cent experienced emotional abuse and 9 per cent were neglected during childhood.

What has Australia learned since the awful, tragic murder of 11-year-old Luke Batty in 2014?

And while the study provides the first national prevalence data, the impacts have been evident in this country for well over a decade.

It is now over 10 years since the horrific killing of Luke and the advocacy of his mum, Rosie, captured the nation’s attention and transformed conversations on family violence. The coronial inquiry concluded that Greg Anderson, Luke’s father, was responsible for his death but also documented in detail the series of missed opportunities to intervene in the case, and that numerous organisations had been ineffectual in only partially identifying the risk Luke faced.

Those findings were handed down 10 years ago and yet, despite over $4bn invested by the state government since the Royal Commission into Family Violence and undoubtable progress in substantially improving prevention of and response to men’s violence against women, there remains limited progress in responding to the safety needs and risks of children impacted by family violence.

Indeed, the uncomfortable question which emerges is whether the Royal Commission’s 2016 finding that children were the “silent victims” of family violence still holds true.

While we acknowledge the tremendous whole of government effort and investment that have gone into implementing the recommendations from the commission, those relating to children (which were few) have arguably received the lightest touch and least investment.

The result: children experiencing family violence in this state remain largely invisible to a reformed service system designed by and for adults.

Children have said they feel invisible in the systems where they seek help.

Successive inquiries have shown children’s deaths in the context of domestic and family violence are more often than not preventable.

In Lost, not Forgotten, the Commission for Children and Young People inquired into the suicide of 35 children in Victoria between 2007 and 2019 who were also known to child protection. In all but one case the children’s lives had been married by family violence prior to their deaths. The investigation concluded that protection systems had failed.

The report was not the first to make such conclusions, and without desperately needed change in Victoria, it is unlikely to be the last.

Prevention and early intervention are not consistently achievable within our current approaches, policies and practices, which routinely overlook the safety needs and risks faced by children and young people as victim-survivors. Children have told us they feel invisible in the systems where they seek help. That they are responded to merely as an extension of their protective parent, often mum, as opposed to being recognised as a victim-survivor in their own right.

There is a need to develop and integrate a trauma-informed and age-appropriate whole of system response for child victims, including in early childhood and school settings, specialist family violence and welfare services, young mental health services, youth justice, and across the health system. Critically, there is a need to address the complete lack of housing options for children and young people experiencing and escaping family violence.

Currently, there are minimal, if any, crisis intervention and accommodation services designed specifically for young people as victim-survivors. As a result, young people escaping violence risk homelessness and encounter systems that are ill equipped to meet their needs. The evidence is clear — policy and practice reform is urgently needed. We need proper investment and the design of a child and youth-centred response to family violence.

The question which remains is whether the government will step up and act now. Meaningful change is sorely needed.

Kate Fitz-Gibbon is a Professor (Practice) at Monash University.

Liana Buchanan is the Victorian Commissioner for Children and Young People