ARACY has made a submission to the Department of Social Services consultation on the Second Action Plan under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032.

ARACY is not a specialist domestic, family and sexual violence organisation. We are a national health promotion charity, and our concern is the wellbeing of children and young people. Our submission asks one question of the Plan: what does it need to do so that children and young people aged 0 to 25 can thrive?

Safety is essential, but recovery can’t be measured only by the absence of violence. Using The Nest, Australia’s evidence-based wellbeing framework for children and young people, we read the Plan across all six domains of wellbeing and the three tiers of public health prevention. We found strong activity at the primary tier, and recurring gaps at the secondary and tertiary tiers, where children are already at risk or working towards recovery.

 

Four shifts we’re calling for

  1. See children directly. Count children and young people as individuals, measure their wellbeing, include their voices, and make child-specific outcomes part of accountability.
  2. Act earlier. Invest in the Early Years (0 to 8) and Middle Years (8 to 14), and build violence-informed capability in early childhood services, schools, primary health care and other universal settings.
  3. Define recovery as whole-child wellbeing. Fund child-specific safety planning, therapeutic recovery, continuity of learning, stable housing, material security, and safe connection to family, kin, culture and community.
  4. Build a connected and culturally safe system. Commit to no-wrong-door support, shared wellbeing language, child-capable workforces, safe information sharing, and ACCO-led prevention, healing and recovery for First Nations children and families.

 

What the evidence tells us

  • Family and domestic violence is the most common form of child maltreatment, affecting more than 4 in 10 young Australians aged 16 to 24 (ARACY and UNICEF Australia).
  • In 2022-23, about 8 children per 1,000 had a substantiated case of maltreatment, yet national research indicates more than 600 per 1,000 have likely experienced some form of it. Children are rarely counted as individuals.
  • Of children and young people hospitalised for family-violence-related reasons, more than one in three had their first such stay before age five (AIHW, 2026).
  • While 3 in 4 people who have been arrested experienced child maltreatment, 85 per cent of people who experienced maltreatment are never arrested (Haslam, 2023). The right support in childhood can change where a child ends up.
  • Bullying in late primary school predicts later dating and relationship violence, which connects the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review directly to the National Plan.

 

What young people told us

Our Young and Wise roundtables shaped the submission. Young people described cultural safety as being seen and represented, not only trained on.

“When you see yourself in the staff at your school, it can really support with feeling safe and vulnerable with what you may be struggling with that is culturally specific, particularly wellbeing staff.”
Young person, 18-25 CALD roundtable