Implementing a Framework for Practice: Evaluation of the DV West’s Children’s Domestic and Family Violence Specialist Program

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 Australia’s DV West over the first 10 months of the new program.

The children’s specialists provide a service response that is trauma- and domestic abuse–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.

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).