Victoria Legal Aid
Adolescent Violence in the Home: Implications for practice
Adolescent Violence in the Home
Implications for Practice
Presentation by Victoria Legal Aid Family Violence Program Manager Leanne Sinclairat the launch of The Last Resort: Pathways to justice research report, website and animation
Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, 11 February 2014
My name is Leanne Sinclair and I am the Family Violence Program Manager at Victoria Legal Aid (VLA). I have had the pleasure of working with the project leader Peninsula Health and partnership organisation, The City of Greater Dandenong, on the Adolescent Violence In The Home (AVITH) project. It has been wonderful to have been part of the journey from a project idea into a much needed research piece and valuable website resource.
Unfortunately, adolescent violence in the home is becoming all too common in Victoria’s Court system. While research suggests that this does not necessarily mean that more adolescents are using violence in the home, but rather that there is now a greater and more effective Police response and an increased willingness for families to take action; we know that if this violence is not addressed appropriately it can have a devastating impact on its victims and families.
VLA provides duty lawyer assistance in family violence intervention order applications in the Children’s Court and Magistrates’ Courts across Victoria. In 2012–13 our in-house lawyers provided over 800 duty lawyer assistances to young people involved in family violence intervention order applications. This represents nearly 10 per cent of the overall intervention order services provided by our in-house duty lawyers statewide.
We provide legal help to both adolescents and parents in family violence intervention order applications, but prioritiselegal assistance to adolescent respondents where possible. We stress the importance of young people being aware of and understanding the nature and consequences of intervention orders, and tailoring the specific terms of the intervention orders to be appropriate for keeping the victim safe, as well as where appropriate, maintaining the family unit.
While Intervention Order proceedings are a civil application, breaching the terms of an intervention order and being charged with this offence has criminal repercussions. Receiving a criminal record can impact negatively upon a young person for life, jeopardising their long-term vocational opportunities and causing further social exclusion, which also has a negative flow-on impact for their family and the community as a whole. For these reasons, it is vital that adolescents receive legal advice and are aware of the seriousness of orders.
Adolescents who use violence in the home rarely do so in a vacuum, and research suggests that there are usually other factors or issues present in the adolescent’s life that contribute to their propensity to use violence. These factors include, but are not limited to, neurobiological harm, mental health concerns, past physical or sexual abuse, substance abuse or issues surrounding family or parental relationship breakdown. So while legal advice is vital to explain legal repercussions and responsibilities of an intervention order, we also see it as an opportunity for lawyers to provide referrals to services that can assist the young person and their family to address the underlying contributing factors to the violence.
Our experience in providing legal assistance has shown us that parents are often not aware of the support services that are available to them. Rather, parents suffer silently for a long time, putting up with their adolescent’s escalating use of violence, placing the family unit under considerable stress. As indicated in the AVITH research, the adolescent’s use of violence continues to escalate, usually until it hits a crisis point or incident. At this point, a call is often made to the Police to deescalate the situation and provide immediate safety. For many parents, this call is a last resort that comes a long time after the violence started.
By making the call to the Police, many parents are simply seeking help for their young person, to get strategies that can work to stop the violence. However, the Police call often propels the family into the Court system, prompting a legal response. Our experience with assisting these parents tells us that many are not supportive of this legally based response to their child’s behaviour.
The AVITH research shows that the penny often drops for the young person and the family following the crisis point. The court becomes the catalyst to engage or reengage with the family therapeutically. Parents want the seriousness of the adolescent’s behaviour to be recognised and to live in a safe home environment, but the risk that a breached intervention order could lead to a criminal conviction is not their desired outcome. These parents speak of an unwillingness to contact the Police should further incidents occur, as they want to protect their child from further social exclusion caused by a criminal record. In this way, the current intervention order model to address adolescent violence does not always have the same effect or desired outcome as an intervention order made between separated adult partners. This recent AVITH research is a great foundation to start critically analysing our current model and considering how appropriate it is in addressing adolescent violence in the long-term.
Without discounting the serious impact that adolescent family violence has on its victims, VLA supports a therapeutic response to adolescent violence that considers the adolescent’s individual circumstances and needs, with referrals to diversionary programs focussed on addressing those needs being available. Without interventions that address the root cause of the violence, adolescents are particularly vulnerable to criminal breach proceedings, and if left unchecked, the adolescent’s use of violence as a means of problem solving and gaining control could become a learned behaviour that they bring to later adult intimate relationships.
Last year, VLA lawyers who provide family violence duty lawyer services across Victoria received specialist family violence training. This training focussed on providing a legal response to respondents that, while providing high quality and appropriate legal advice around the intervention order, also does not collude with or condone violence supporting attitudes and behaviours. It is hoped that this adolescent focused research, will now provide an evidentiary base that will support and inform future training for VLA lawyers who work with adolescents.
Our ‘wish’ is for the legal system to be able to respond in a holistic manner that delivers therapeutic benefits for families and young people. The response should focus on the adolescent’s individual needs and circumstances, such as the need to address behavioural issues, substance abuse problems or mental health concerns. VLA supports early intervention, with investments being made into specialist services being available to adolescents and families in the early stages of a justice response. In this way, the Children’s Court Clinic is a useful service in identifying underlying issues of family violence dynamics, mental health assessments as well as referral to appropriate services.
Our experience shows us that lawyers find it hard enough to navigate through the family violence system and to be able to locate appropriate services. For this reason, we see great value in the website developed by Peninsula Health in not only being able to generate awareness of adolescent family violence, but to provide a road map of where assistance can be found for families across the state.
I hope that schools, youth services, lawyers and parents use this website to provide early referrals for adolescents to get help with the cause of their violence before their behaviour reaches the crisis point. Ultimately we want our response to adolescent family violence to focus more heavily on prevention rather than punishment after the fact.
Leanne Sinclair
Family Violence Program Manager
Victoria Legal Aid
11 February 2014
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