Hope Street has submitted a position paper that documents and makes recommendations to the Royal Commission into Family Violence on how to ensure that the lived experiences of the adolescent child who has been made homeless because of family violence are heard and appropriately responded to.

Hope Street has welcomed the recent surge of awareness towards exposing the horrific reality of family violence in Australia. Whilst the Government, the Media and Social Networks report that on average, one woman a week is murdered as a result of family violence (and this in itself is unacceptable), Hope Street is witness to the accumulative harm that family violence creates - the number of near misses, the witnessing of family violence, the experience of family violence either as the primary victim or secondary victim as well as the trauma and disconnect it creates for young people. In our experience young people are often voiceless in the family violence space; largely the focus is on women or women and their children but not the adolescent child: the young person.

Young people who witness or are subjected to family violence often enter into homelessness alone and vulnerable. It is for this reason that our submission has been made to advocate for one of our most vulnerable and invisible victims of family violence within society: the adolescent child who has been made homeless because of their lived experience of family violence.

Read the full submission