The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare held the first AVITH in Context webinar on the 12th of October 2021.
AVITH in Context is a webinar series designed for child and family service practitioners to learn more about adolescent violence in the home (AVITH). Throughout this series practitioners share their experiences, practice expertise, and identify emerging themes in the AVITH space.
This webinar featured Family Violence Lawyer, Carmel Lohan, and Youth Practitioner, Caitlin Lester from Youthlaw. Carmel and Caitlin discussed how the Pre-Court AVITH program utilises a model of integrated practice to respond to AVITH. The integrated model uses a holistic approach to the needs of young people with legal issues and its goal is to provide positive legal outcomes based on legal and non-legal work.
The speakers provided several insights into issues faced by young people. These include:
The speakers also spoke about possible solutions that could support young people who are going through such complexities. These include:
Carmel and Caitlin also touched on the impact of COVID-19 and the challenges of service delivery. They identified that it was difficult to manage safety and contact with clients, there were experiences of increased conflict within the home, limited service capacity to respond to AVITH, and that there was an absence of regular coping mechanisms for young people.
Overall, this webinar highlighted some consistent trends such as the failure to trust the young person as narrator of their own experiences. These issues can lead to a distrust of police and further feelings of disempowerment by young people.
The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare is committed to being a part of discussions and continues to work with agencies to find better solutions and responses to AVITH.
Further resources: