Tailor the methods, modes and frequency of feedback to account for and accommodate factors that may shape the child’s response and recovery needs, including their age, gender, ability, sexuality, ethnicity, culture and religion.

Practitioner insights:

• “Children often display feedback through their actions and responses to activities provided for them. The environment has been designed to allow the child to explore freely or with guidance. The child often engages in their own interest which then gives the workers the opportunity to observe and gain feedback on their likes and dislikes. After children have settled in, guided play is provided with supported staff and parent that then allows parent and worker to observe child's feedback.”

• “Many barriers exist for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities including transport, service distrust, financial burdens, drug and alcohol issues, homelessness and family reprisal. … If family violence support services are overwhelmed our children bear the cost.”

• “10-13 year olds (the tweenies) are an individual cohort with specific development needs. This age group is more often than not ‘sponges’. Providing support at a younger age would be true prevention and intervention work.”

• “Families from CALD and refugee backgrounds may not understand the implications of family violence on children. We need to raise awareness and build capacity of victim-survivor parents to access support and not consider that as a stigma.”

Recognise that each child’s willingness and ability to give feedback, as well as the time and space needed to do so, will be influenced by their past and/or ongoing experiences of trauma.

Practitioner insights:

• “Children may feel afraid or distrustful of adults and may feel closed off and inaccessible as a result of experiences of violence or abuse.”

• “Children have expressed needs to be seen as whole human beings. They need safe spaces and relationships to heal. They hold the trauma in their bodies and cannot always express this in words.”

• “Taking a trauma-informed approach involves gathering voice of the child; systems work to highlight the child's experience and voice; undertaking individual, family and dyadic work with the child and parent, to restore the relationship and/or attachment after the ruptures family violence causes; writing therapeutic narratives or lifestory representations of their experiences; and trauma processing …”

Identify family relationships and dynamics that may affect the child’s willingness and ability to engage with the service and to give feedback.

Practitioner insights:

• “Parents can deny any family violence, which means that the child sometimes does not recognise it either. Some children do not have the words to talk about it or even understand it, because it is 'normal' for them.”

• “Children are often guarded and fearful of being removed from their parents. This can hinder them being open to discussing fears and experiences.”

• “Sometimes children need a space to talk away from care givers to avoid conflict between family members, blame or shame.”

• “During appointments with the whole family, children might be asked to reflect on any changes they have noticed in family life since service delivery began. Risk assessment would be made before asking children to speak about this, particularly if the person using violence is present.”

Keep the focus on the child and their distinct experiences, feelings, views and needs. Be warm in your approach. Be open to the child’s perspective. Understand the child’s story and topics they may feel uncomfortable addressing. Apply the CHANGE principles to uphold children’s rights.

Practitioner insights:

• “Try to connect with all parts of the child's life to understand their experience of family violence, including school, the person using violence, family supports and carers.”

• “We need to listen to and hear the voices of children who are victim survivors of family violence. We need to understand their individual experiences and work to meet their needs, when we understand what their specific needs are. We need to stop assuming that we know what is best for young people and hear what they are saying to us. And we also need to stop thinking that children lie about being victim survivors. Believe children.”

• “Children are often great advocates for themselves when they are provided a platform in which they can be heard. We need to mitigate the projection of adult emotions and perceptions on children and allow them to process at a developmentally appropriate level.”

Be mindful of the inherent power imbalance between children as service users, and practitioners as service providers, which may impact on children’s willingness and ability to give feedback. Seek to mitigate this imbalance by implementing the CHANGE guiding principles

Insights from children and young people:

• “Keep the line open for the child or young person, because the service support might not work. Offer other options, check-in after offering the service and ask, can we do anything more?”

• “Services meet young people at a vulnerable point in their life. If it is has been something that really helped them and made them feel safer, it can be hard to then provide constructive feedback, especially acknowledging the power imbalance between a practitioner and young person.”

• “At the moment people who do this work don’t know how to help kids in my generation who are facing stuff they haven’t had to deal with at our age.”

• “Be warm in your approach. When the practitioner exhibits a lack of warmth, it causes the child to feel as though they are being interviewed and questioned rather than receiving support and assistance. This dynamic may hinder the development of a positive and productive helping relationship.”

Be clear about how your organisation will use the feedback it collects from children. Build ‘buy-in’ and commitment from practitioners, including through capability-building opportunities. Support ongoing, reflective conversations about the value of children’s feedback for continuous service improvement.

Practitioner insights:

• “Offer practitioners resources and training about interventions that can help empower children at different stages of their development to process their experiences. This includes further training … in having conversations with children to discuss their experiences and whether they would like any support for what they have been through.”

• “I would love to have a more consistent and child-friendly way to get feedback and evaluate our work.”

• “Children are amazing and actually many of them have the answers to how we change the adult-centric systems, values and attitudes. We just have to ensure there are spaces for them to tell us and show us and move out of their way.”

• “When children are given the space and a voice, they have a lot to tell, and we can learn so much from them.”