More than 200 children's commissioners, frontline workers, researchers and young people have come together to call for urgent action to protect and support children experiencing violence in a national report released on Tuesday.
"It felt like the system was for adults. Kids just had to survive however they could," a child, named Zara, noted in the report.
Children are being treated as dependents rather than victim-survivors in their own right with distinct trauma and recovery needs, and prevented from accessing timely specialist support due to lengthy waiting lists, the report found.
Some services reported wait lists of up to six months for specialist therapeutic support, with organisations having to turn kids away due to lack of capacity and backlogs of around 200 children.
"We are only funded to see two per cent of the most complex cases in child protection - we need increased funding, as demand far outstrips capacity," a state service reported.
These barriers were worse for First Nations children, those in rural and remote areas, living with a disability, and LGBTQI+ children, it said.
The report called for reform to an "adult-centric" family violence response system, listing 20 actions for governments including elevating children's voices by including their experiences in policy design, program evaluation and decision-making.
"Children and young people must be heard in decisions that affect their safety, recovery and future," Save the Children's 54 reasons program executive director Vicki Mau said.
"Their voices should not sit at the margins of policy, they should be central to how governments design services, fund responses and measure whether systems are working."
There was currently a "critical opportunity" to better include children in the response to family violence, as the the federal government's Second Action Plan to end violence against women is developed, she said.
Among recommendations, the federal government has been asked to create the first framework for primary prevention of violence against children.
Child-specific funding for domestic and family violence specialist roles and services was also recommended, rather than relying on adult service spillover.
It also calls for cross-system collaboration between child protection, family law, police, housing and mental health sectors, and for First Nations community organisations to deliver self-determined and culturally safe solutions.
Co-author of the report, Monash University researcher Matt Tyler, said it provided a clear path of specific actions.
"Children and young people have told us what they need, and we have decades of research and inquiries with recommendations that remain un-actioned," he said.
"What is needed is the political will to act."
The report was submitted to the Department of Social Services to inform the Second Action Plan, which closed to consultation on July 31.
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