Practitioners' experiences - Outcomes, Practice and Evidence Network

By Isabel Chung, Katitza Marinkovic Chavez, Kathryn Joy, Hannah Morrice, and Eva Alisic

What we know

An estimated 800 children across Australia have lost a parent to intimate partner homicide (IPH) in the past two decades leading up to June 2021 (Alisic et al., 2023). In the aftermath, practitioners play a critical role to support children in their recovery and helping new caregivers to navigate pathways to longer-term support.

Additionally, practitioners are uniquely positioned to understand the realities of service provision, including how they can meet, or fall short of meeting, the needs of children bereaved by IPH. This summary outlines the key findings of a study on the perspectives of practitioners who have supported children following the loss of a parent to IPH.

What we did

Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 practitioners working in the spaces of mental health care, child and family services, and a range of other health and social support agencies across Australia.

Implications for policy and practice

Develop a clear roadmap for practitioners supporting children who have lost a parent to IPH, including guidance on the services and supports available across different life stages.
Adapt lessons from existing programs focused on supporting children bereaved by the loss of a parent to IPH, such as the Arizona Child and Adolescent Survivor Initiative (ACASI).
Enhance mechanisms to involve practitioners and people with lived experience to strengthen child-centred approaches to service provision, such as through formulating an Advisory Group composed of people with lived experience.

What we found

Fragmented service responses

Practitioners described that poor communication and coordination between services contributed to siloes between key agencies. This led to fragmented care pathways and limited the continuity of care available for children seeking support. Without a consistent point of contact, some practitioners described interactions with children left frustrated at having to repeatedly recount their experiences to what felt like a revolving door of service providers. These challenges were exacerbated by time and resource pressures faced by services, which some felt limited their capacity to familiarise themselves with children’s individual experiences.

Narrow policy understandings of children’s specific needs

Practitioners noted policy-level assumptions that existing services – such as victim assistance programs – were sufficiently equipped to provide long-term support to both children and caregivers. However, the diverse and evolving nature of children’s needs meant that they did not often ‘fit’ neatly into the care of any one service. This also added to persistent gaps in longer-term support, which may become increasingly complex to navigate over time.Resultantly, some described extending care beyond their specific professional roles to bridge these gaps in care to ensure that children’s experiences were acknowledged and understood, and their best interests preserved at crucial points of decision-making.

Impacts on practitioners

Practitioners were acutely impacted by these experiences. They described a sense of frustration at the mismatch between what they felt was necessary for children’s recovery, and what was realistically available. There was also a lack of formal support for practitioners navigating these experiences, though some were able to secure support through their own professional networks. Nonetheless, practitioners described drawing on these challenges to advocate to improve children’s access to care, including by supporting other practitioners working with children who have lost a parent to IPH.

References

Chung, I. (2024) What are professionals’ experiences in providing support to children and families bereaved by domestic homicide, and their perspectives in navigating the broader family violence response? Master of Public Health Capstone Thesis, The University of Melbourne.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge that most of our team lives and works on stolen land that has never been ceded. All original illustrations are by Thu Huong Nguyen (Abigail).

Our team is based on the lands of the Wurundjeri People. We respectfully acknowledge their Elders past and present and extend this acknowledgment to all Aboriginal and Torres Islander Peoples. We would like to acknowledge other previous and current core members of our team who have contributed their time and expertise to various research and practice outputs (in alphabetical order): Nicola Armstrong, Beverley Attard, Anna Barrett, Rebecca Burdon, Lorelai Burns, Rowena Conroy, John Devaney, Oliver Eastwood, John Frederick, Paige Gammon-Parsons, Claire Houghton, Cathy Humphreys, Ashton Kline, Zain Kurdi, Freya Lily, Robyn Molyneaux, Thu Huong Nguyen, Tania Reis, Ashwini Sakthiakumaran and Mira Vasileva.