We have heard all too often from Australian children and young people who have experienced violence and abuse of the ways in which those they trusted failed them - failed to hear them, to validate their experiences of abuse, to provide safety, and to support them to heal.
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There are cruel commonalities across the experiences of children and young people who have experienced violence and abuse in this country.
Take, for example, a young boy, who described the decline of his mental health throughout his childhood as he struggled alone with the impacts of growing up. with family violence.
It wasn't until his late teens that he summoned the courage to seek help - a decision which was met with limited access to supports. As a result, he experienced significant periods of instability including homelessness after he escaped the family home, loss of friendships following school disengagement, thoughts of self-harm and problematic drinking behaviours.
And his story is not unique.
In spite of the best efforts of front-line staff working with a tiny fraction of the resources needed, we have a service system which all too often leads young victim-survivors to encounter dead ends, unanswered calls and a lack of meaningful action to support their safety, recovery and healing.
While there are some differences across the states and territories, successive inquiries, at least three royal commissions and recent academic studies have evidenced that our systems are not yet designed at scale to be accessible and appropriate to meeting the help-seeking, recovery and healing needs of young victim-survivors.
They are all too often designed by adults, and with adults primarily in mind.
Importantly, this is not about a singular point of failure. This represents systemic failure across child protection, social services, youth justice, housing, education and health systems.
We have an evidenced need for child-centred crisis response, healing and recovery services at scale across this country. The Australian Child Maltreatment Study found that child maltreatment is "endemic" is this country with nearly one in three Australian children experiencing physical abuse, 28 per cent sexual abuse, over 30 per cent emotional abuse and nearly 2 in 5 Australian children growing up in a household where there is domestic and family violence.
And the evidence to inform change and action is continually mounting. The release of the Adolescent Man Box study by Jesuit Social Services this week, leaps forward our understandings of the attitudes and social pressures underpinning the challenges facing adolescents. The study, which presents findings from a survey of over 1400 adolescents of all genders across Australia, reveals that over two-thirds of boys surveyed agreed with more than half of what is termed the "Adolescent Man Box rules".
The study findings show that harms enacted by adolescent boys are often times underpinned by their own experiences of violence. The study found two in five adolescents had experienced victimisation - been physically hurt on purpose, sexually harassed, insulted or threatened including online.
And that of adolescent boys who report using aggression in the past month, 80 per cent also report having been victimised in the same period.
The study also found that while adolescent boys are experiencing significant distress in their lives they do not want to, nor know how to seek help.
Here we have a significant opportunity. Addressing the harms of victimisation, supporting young victim-survivors to recover and heal - is prevention. It directly addresses the risk of intergenerational violence. This doesn't at all excuse the behaviours, which are largely targeted at girls and can have serious and long-term impacts, but rather it seeks to understand them in order to progress prevention and early intervention efforts.
Combining what we know from research and practice, there is undoubtedly much work to be done in Australia to address children's experiences of violence. Yet despite stated best intentions, the actions of governments have been slow.
We wonder whether this is due to the siloing of current efforts to address children's experiences of violence and abuse. In Australia we have a National Plan to end Violence against Women and Children with a focus on domestic, family and sexual violence. There is also Safe and Supported - a National Framework focused on Child Abuse and Neglect, and thirdly, we have a National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse. Responsibility for delivery of the first two sits within the Department of Social Services, while the third is the responsibility of the National Office for Child Safety.
Each of them has a first action plan sitting beneath it, and over the next three years the government has committed to developing a second Action Plan for each. For the National Plan this is due in 2028, for Safe and Supported 2027 and for the National Strategy to deliver the next Action Plan in 2026.
The development and delivery of a different Action Plan each year, each dealing with a different facet of children's experiences of violence, places governments at risk of spending more time planning than acting.
This siloed approach also stands in contrast to the reality of children's experiences. The Childhood Maltreatment Study found one in four Australians experience between three and five different forms of child abuse and violence. Yet our Plans to address these harms are siloed.
It's why we are calling on the federal government, in partnership with states and territories, to better integrate efforts - to develop and deliver a dedicated five-year National Action Plan for children and young people who have been victims of violence and abuse.
This is not a recommendation for a plan for the sake of another plan. This one action plan will provide an accountable laser focus on explicitly addressing all forms of violence and abuse experienced by children and young people across the spectrum of prevention, early intervention, response, recovery and healing. It could drive new approaches at scale to reach children where they spend their time, including in the digital world, and to make sure every disclosure of violence or abuse is met with a validating, safe and timely response.
This will require building workforce capability across schools, health services, policing and community organisations, to ensure front-line practitioners are able to better identify, assess and manage risk, to respond to disclosures in a child-centred manner, and to take evidence-based steps to support safety, to address perpetration and to prevent further harm.
And investment in healing and recovery services need not wait. Governments can move right now to make some progress by increasing funding for children and young people impacted by violence and abuse.
Critically, any dedicated action plan must centre the voices of young people themselves, including First Nations children. Those with lived experience of violence and abuse should have an active role in shaping and monitoring the response.
Their testimony should not just be heard but systematically acted on in a timely way. From a child's right perspective this is essential - Australian children have a right to participate in all matters that impact them.
Australia's children and young people deserve a co-ordinated, fully funded, and measurable national effort to keep them safe and to support them to heal from violence and abuse. Children and young people have heard time and time again over the last three years that they are victim-survivors in their own right - we now need coordinated action to deliver on this political rhetoric.
- Kate Fitz-Gibbon is a professor at Monash University. Matt Tyler is executive director at Jesuit Social Services.
