Children in the midst of family violence

Abstract

For children, domestic and family violence (DFV) involves exposure to violence between important adults in their lives, as well as directly or indirectly experiencing abuse. While DFV adversely affects children, policy and service responses have traditionally rendered children invisible, focusing instead on adult victim/survivors and perpetrators of DFV. Working effectively with families requires recognising children as victim/survivors in their own right, with needs and experiences separate to those of their caregivers. In Australia, and internationally, terms such as ‘intimate partner violence’, ‘domestic abuse’, ‘domestic violence’ and ‘family violence’ are used to explain violence and abuse in intimate, family and ‘family-like’ relationships (e.g. carers, kinship relationships). Throughout this chapter, we use the term domestic and family violence, which brings together ‘domestic violence’ and ‘family violence’ to recognise the range of relationships in which these forms of violence may occur.