Right now, there are children and young people finding the courage to disclose that they’re being abused by someone who is meant to take care of them. And yet, in 2025, Australia still hasn’t found the courage to properly respond to them. To build domestic and family violence support services that treat children and young people as victims in their own right, not mere witnesses.

Ten years after Victoria’s nation-leading Royal Commission into Family Violence and billions spent, our country still has no guaranteed, dedicated response for children who reach out to domestic and family violence crisis services without a parent. If they contact a frontline service, they’re more likely to be turned away than supported.

Next week, I’ll be stepping down as Deputy Chair of Victoria’s Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council. As I leave that role, my final ask is simple and urgent – build a child and young person-centred, developmentally-appropriate service with time-bound support, in every region of Australia.

This week is National Child Protection Week. It calls on all of us to ‘Shift Conversation to Action’. For this shift to truly begin, we as a community must first recognise the scale of our failure to support children and young people.

I have watched this failure up close. A teenager discloses family violence to a support service and arrives alone. The hub or hotline nods and then the pathway shrinks to a report to child protection. This investigative process often doesn’t involve the child directly. If adults don’t say they want help, too often the child gets nothing. Another rejection. Another signal that they don’t matter.

For most of my childhood, family violence wasn’t a report or a reform agenda. It was my life.

If we really want to shift conversation to action, we must centre the children we are trying to protect. To me, this means a purpose-built network of specialist services co-designed with children and young people with rules that recognise children as primary clients. One with safe consent pathways, case-managed and developmentally appropriate care that stays with a child across health, education, housing and justice and capability.

Without this, their reality remains precarious. One wrong door leading to a quiet off-ramp to nothing. 

Yes, it will cost money. But we are already paying for failure – through emergency departments, homelessness services, youth justice, health and mental health. The only choice is whether we keep funding the periphery or invest in a centre that prevents it.

In March, Conor Pall joined FW to share how systems failures compounded the abuse perpetrated against him.

Logistics are not the barrier. Political will is.

I was 12 years old when the Royal Commission handed down its 227 recommendations. I’m 22 now. For most of my childhood, family violence wasn’t a report or a reform agenda. It was my life.

In recent years I have sat with ministers, senior bureaucrats and premiers carrying the same message: when I ask for help, I need help. Now, not months from now.

If, as we claim, we truly believe that children and young people are victims in their own right, we must build responses tailored to their experiences. That is how conversation becomes action. That is how we prevent violence in a generation. That is how protection and support become more than empty words.

Today, there are children and young people deciding whether it’s safe to speak. When they courageously say, “I’m ready”, Australia must be ready too. In a country that still believes in a fair go, it’s the very least we owe them.

1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732
Lifeline: 13 11 14
Kids Help Line: 1800 55 1800
13 Yarn: 13 92 76
Men’s Referral Service: 1300 766 491