Page 4080 - Week 13 - Thursday, 2 December 2021
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Despite the challenges of COVID, significant progress has been made on addressing four out of the five DVPC recommendations, including putting the voices of children and young people at the heart of service design and delivery, to influence the development of child-centred and child-safe services and responses to domestic and family violence; establishing an ACT intermediary scheme to improve children and young people’s experiences of the justice system; enhancing domestic and family violence training to include information about child and adolescent development, insights from children’s lived experience of domestic and family violence, and indicators and impacts of this violence on children and young people; and improving the ACT’s use of data to inform strategies for children and young people.
The ACT government has led the following initiatives to address the DVPC recommendations: continuing to develop the safe and connected youth project to provide children and their families with targeted support to improve family functioning and reduce the risks of homelessness; developing and delivering culturally appropriate services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families; developing a specialised intensive trauma service; extending youth mental health services; developing early support service responses in line with raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility; piloting the Got Your Back group therapy program with Relationships Australia for young people living with domestic and family violence; co-designing domestic and family violence supports with young people, community and government; and designing and implementing integrated responses to domestic and family violence across directorates and services, focusing on the needs of children and young people.
The ACT government recognises that there is more work to do. The government is prioritising efforts towards achieving the intent of the final outstanding recommendation, recommendation 2, to increase the number and availability of therapeutic services for children and have clearer referral pathways and visibility of what services exist.
The Coordinator-General for Family Safety will make the progress report publicly available, supporting the domestic and family violence sector to know what activity is underway. I encourage service providers and the community sector to read and use the insights from young people’s lived experiences of domestic and family violence, highlighted in the now published booklet entitled Now You Have Heard Us, What Will You Do?
I also take this opportunity to thank members of the Assembly for their ongoing interest in, and support for, the work that the ACT government is doing to deliver new and improved domestic and family violence responses to meet the particular needs of children and young people in our community.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act review—government response
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Manager of Government Business, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Industrial Relations and Workplace Safety, Minister for
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