Addressing adolescent violence in the home from the child’s perspective

Adolescent family violence (AFV), also referred to as adolescent violence in the home (AVITH), has become a topic of growing interest among academics, practitioners, and advocates in recent years.

It refers to the use of violence or abusive and intimidating behaviours by a young person against their parent, carer, sibling or other family member within the home. It remains an under-researched issue compared with other forms of domestic and family violence (DFV), such as intimate partner violence.

In 2016, the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence highlighted the need to build improved understanding of the use of family violence by young people in the home.

More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated restrictions highlighted this form of violence as an issue of growing concern that requires increased community, government and service system attention.

The need for holistic and non-punitive responses to AFV

While not every young person displaying aggressive or violent behaviours towards parents, carers or other family members has a childhood history of trauma, research strongly suggests that young people engaging in AFV often have complex needs, and frequently share past or ongoing experiences of DFV.

Often compared to adult perpetrators of DFV, young people engaging in AFV attract police, mental health and/or youth justice interventions in the absence of child-centred, therapeutic and trauma-informed responses to young people using violence in the home.

Parents often remain silent about such experiences of violence in the home until safety concerns for family members become untenable. Police are often called as a last resort, with few more suitable support mechanisms available to families affected by AFV. The justice system, however, is ill-equipped to adequately respond to AFV.

Punitive and reactive responses prevail, and children using violence in the home are frequently labelled and stigmatised for their “problem behaviours” displayed in the home. About 80% of those with initial police interventions for AFV show up in future contact with the justice system. 

Where responses are punitive and reactive, holistic support needs often remain unmet – both for the young person and for their family. Reactive responses further occur “10 years too late”. By that point in time, several opportunities for early, trauma-informed interventions have been missed.

Holistic and trauma-informed responses to families where AFV is present are critical. This includes the need for trauma-informed support for affected family members, as well as the young person using violence in the home.

However, current specialist service responses to AFV remain scarce and often operate in a crisis rather than behaviour-change space –especially with the increase in service demand since pandemic-related household lockdowns.

Our research

Researchers from the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre have obtained funding from the Australian National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) in its 2020-2022 Core Grant Research Program to explore the experiences of young people using violence in the home in greater depth.

With increasing attention to AFV, including debates regarding prevalence rates and increasing police callouts for AFV occurrences during COVID-19, the research team will generate a holistic understanding of the views of Australian young people using and experiencing violence in the home.

This project will build on past research undertaken by team members on parent and carer experiences of AFV, along with mothers’ perceptions of their children’s experiences of parental DFV, and their subsequent use of violence in the home.

The newly-funded ANROWS project will survey 5000 young Australians aged 16 to 20 years old to complete the first large-scale national prevalence study of AFV. To generate a holistic picture of young people’s use of violence in the home, the Monash research team will:

• create a robust prevalence database on the use of family violence by young people within the home, including among marginalised and minority community groups
• examine the nature/types of family violence used by young people within the home
• identify the degree to which young people who use violence within the home have experienced different forms of DFV throughout childhood
• identify the support needs of young people using violence in the home to inform future directions for holistic and trauma-informed child and family-centred interventions
• identify experiences and support needs specific to First Nations and CALD young people.

This new project places the voices and experiences of young people at the centre of advancing Australia’s evidence base around AFV. It will generate knowledge as it relates to AFV prevalence rates and the support needs of young people whose support needs currently remain unmet between the interventions of police, mental health and youth justice services.

Findings are expected to have whole-of-family benefits for families affected by AFV.

Knowledge generated through this project is expected to inform future directions for policy and practice that addresses the support needs of all family members where AFV is present.

By taking a holistic approach to understanding young people’s use of violence in the home, service systems will be better-equipped to address diverse and underlying needs of families affected by AFV, including early interventions to disrupt the intergenerational transmission of DFV, and ongoing recovery support for young people with adverse childhood experiences.

Silke Meyer was the Deputy Director, Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, Associate Professor (Research), Criminology at Monash University at the time of writing this article.