This study explores how young victim-survivors in Victoria experience and navigate the crisis support system when escaping family violence. It was designed using a trauma-informed, child-centred research framework and comprised three phases: a desktop mapping of existing services; stakeholder workshops with Victorian practice and service delivery experts; and in-depth interviews with young people aged 16 to 25 years old with lived experience of family violence and seeking help in Victoria. Despite the substantial reform agenda that has been progressed in the nearly ten years since the Royal Commission into Family Violence (RCFV, 2016), the family violence service system in Victoria remains predominantly adult-centric and often fails to recognise young people as victim-survivors in their own right. Critical gaps persist in ensuring young people - particularly unaccompanied minors - can access safe housing, specialist support services, and clear pathways that support their stability, healing and recovery
