Y-Change partners with Safe and Equal to support young victim survivors
Y-Change
Our Y-Change team of Lived Experience Consultants and the peak body for specialist family violence services, Safe and Equal, recently co-produced a resource guide to help practitioners better support children and young people who are experiencing family violence.
Family violence is rarely seen or understood through the eyes of children and young people. Way too often, we are the ones you leave behind.
The voices of children and young people impacted by family violence are often unheard. It’s important to recognise children and young people not just as extensions of their parents or caregivers, or ‘secondary victims’ of family violence, but as victim survivors in their own right.
New Resource: Learning from lived experience
This new guide for family violence practitioners explores key considerations for supporting children and young people with lived experiences of family violence.
The sector-leading resource covers 10 topics, such as 'Create a safe and inclusive space’. For each topic, practical activities are suggested that practitioners can facilitate with children and young people accessing their services.
Create a safe and inclusive space
Opening up about family violence is often really scary for children and young people.
It’s important you take the time to bond with us and help us feel safe. You can do this by sharing a bit about yourself. Go at our pace.
Display meaningful signals, posters and objects around your service that shows you are a safe, welcoming and child-friendly place.
Activity
Complete an activity with the child or young person to build rapport. Print the colouring in activity connected to this resource – let the young person pick the colours and craft materials you use to complete the activity. Seek to understand the things that inspire us, explore our interests, hobbies, music, personal values, and life goals. Show that you’re not in a rush and have time to get to know us.
Go at our pace. Don’t expect safety in the initial conversation.
This guide is complemented by two colouring-in activities that were also co-produced by Y-Change:
Use this guide by reading, reflecting on and coming back to Y-Change’s tips, practical activity ideas and direct quotes throughout the resource.
The artwork and colouring-in activities were created by young artist and illustrator, Chadai Chamoun.
Download ’Learning from lived experience’ guide
Berry Street’s Y-Change team is proud to have partnered with Safe and Equal (formerly DV Vic and DVRCV), the peak body for specialist family violence services supporting victim survivors in Victoria, to co-produce this valuable resource.
About Y-Change
Berry Street’s Y-Change initiative is a social and systemic change platform for young people aged 18 to 30 with lived experiences of socioeconomic and systemic disadvantage. As Lived Experience Consultants, the team works to challenge the thinking and practices of social systems through advocacy and leadership.
Children and young people continue leading change in their own right
