Supporting the mental health of children who have experienced family and domestic violence
If you need immediate support
This pathway is about noticing the impacts of experiencing family and domestic violence on children and ways to support their emotional wellbeing and mental health. It does not offer advice about physical safety planning or making decisions to leave an abusive or unsafe relationship.
If you need immediate support, advice about safety planning or confidential counselling, contact the National Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service: call 1800 737 732 (24 hours per day, 7 days a week), text 0458 737 732 or chat with a counsellor online.
About this pathway
This pathway is for parents who are experiencing or have experienced family and domestic violence and want to know how they can support their children’s social and emotional wellbeing.
It was developed with women and young people who are victim-survivors and the health professionals and practitioners who support them. It aims to guide you in thinking about your child’s experience of family violence and ways to lessen the impacts on their mental health now and in the future.
In the following video (42 seconds), practitioners working with women and children who have experiences of family and domestic violence share how this pathway can help. After the video there’s some important information about this pathway and how you can get the most out of it.
Children’s experiences of family and domestic violence can include their own experiences of interpersonal (physical, sexual or emotional) abuse as well as seeing, hearing or being impacted by acts of violence towards other family members.
This pathway focuses on supporting the mental health of children who have seen, heard or been impacted by acts of violence against others. These are typically acts done by one parent towards another, most commonly by the child’s father (or stepfather or mother’s partner) towards their mother.
There is another Hub pathway in development for parents supporting children who have experienced interpersonal abuse. If your child has experienced interpersonal abuse, please seek support from child mental health specialists as soon as you are able to. With the right support at any stage, many children can recover and thrive.
Who this pathway is for
This pathway is for parents who are experiencing or have experienced family and domestic violence.
We acknowledge that both men and women can use violence towards a partner or family member. In most cases of family and domestic violence (at least four out of five1), the violence is perpetrated against women by men. Men’s violence against women and children is more common, repeated and likely to have more serious effects.1
The language in this pathway is based on this knowledge about experiences of family and domestic violence. This means that the parent who is the victim-survivor is most often referred to as female or a mother and the perpetrator of violence as being male or a father. The written content and videos feature the voices of mothers who are victim-survivors and young people whose fathers used violence.
The ideas and strategies in this pathway may be helpful to all parents who have experienced family and domestic violence, regardless of gender and relationship type. When and how you use them will depend on whether you:
are living in family and domestic violence (if it’s safe for you to use this resource and talk with your child about what’s going on)
are leaving or have recently left a violent partner
separated from a violent partner a long time ago.
If you are a father who has used violence, coercion or control – and you are here because you understand (or want to know) the impacts on your child’s mental health and want to change your behaviour and relationship with your child – there’s information and contact details for support services on the Emerging Minds website.