Page 4202 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 24 October 2018
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struggled each day just trying to understand what people were saying to me in English. Nor did we tell our neighbours or family back home.
Though mum sometimes rang the police to ask for help when dad was outside our new flat shouting, I do not think that the good officers who responded ever really saw me or my siblings, or understood clearly the impact that all of this was having on each one of us. They dealt with my mum, but never with us kids. In essence, we children and our distress were invisible. I know from first-hand experience the physical, emotional, social, behavioural, developmental and cognitive impacts of domestic violence on children. I experienced all of them, and I did so in complete silence.
The DVPC report recommends “systemic changes” “to enable system-wide cultural change and to build the evidence base required for credible and accountable action”. The report then recommends action in five priority areas. I am happy that the government has responded quickly to the first of these recommendations, committing $100,000 to assist the Coordinator-General for Family Safety and the Children and Young People Commissioner to co-design an appropriate framework that will allow for consulting actual children and young people in order to better understand their needs.
This design process is an important part of implementing this recommendation. As experts have noted, discussing traumatic events with a child victim can easily re-traumatise the child or even cause further harm. The Children and Young People Commissioner has publicly acknowledged this risk and is committed to developing a framework, aided by those with professional expertise, that allows for a consultation process that will protect those who have already been victimised by domestic and family violence.
The immediate response to this recommendation signals that the government understands the issue and is committed to finding a way to implement what is a rather challenging proposal. No doubt there will be obstacles going forward, but the process has been started, and no-one at this point in time can fairly question the government’s commitment.
I have moved this motion today because I hope to see a similar response to recommendation 5 in the DVPC report. As the report itself notes, an essential element in making sure that children and young people who are affected by domestic violence move from “invisible” to visible is the collection and utilisation of good data.
Currently, as explained in the DVPC report, there are limitations in the ACT approaches to identifying clients and capturing case data. This lack of data masks the true extent and nature of unmet need. This low visibility in official data about domestic and family violence occurs in part because children are not considered the primary clients from the perspective of services being delivered. Fixing this problem is identified in the report as “crucial”.
The good news is that in the opinion of the report’s authors, the ACT is in a very good position to begin implementing this recommendation straightaway. The ACT’s human services agencies have already developed a common dataset that addresses many of
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