Implementing a framework for practice: Evaluation of the DV West’s Children’s Domestic and Family Violence Specialist Program, Final report

Abstract

This report provides the findings from an evaluation of the work of the five Children’s Domestic and Family Violence Specialist Workers (children’s specialists) at DV West, over the first 10 months of the new program. The children’s specialists provide a service response that is trauma and violence-informed, culturally safe and underpinned by the Children and Young Person’s Framework: Supporting families in domestic and family violence refuges and services (CYP Framework) (Gander, 2015) and the Safe & Together Model (https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com). The CYP Framework recognises that there are many negative and cumulative impacts of domestic and family violence on children and young people, but also acknowledges that children have their own agency, strengths, resistance, and coping strategies. It draws on a growing body of literature exploring the complex range of the strategies that children and young people use to cope and recover (Katz, 2022). While children and young people are victims/survivors of domestic and family violence ‘in their own right’, the CYP Framework recognises that their recovery requires intervention that addresses the contexts of their lives: their experiences and developmental stage; their relationship with their mother/carer and with their wider family/Kinship network; and the interconnection with broader social and community life. This is consistent with research findings on how children and young people use resources such as supportive friends and family, play, sport, journaling, music, and other forms of creative expression to cope and recover (Fairchild and McFerran, 2018; Fellin et al., 2018, 2019 as cited in Katz, 2022). Responding to children and young people across these multiple domains provides a broad canvas through which to achieve the core goal of reducing risk factors and increasing protective factors, so that children and young people develop resilience and recover from the experience of domestic and family violence.