Children’s experiences of domestic violence

Abstract

This chapter explores the complexities of training and teaching students and practitioners about children's experiences of domestic violence. In contrast to the established narrative, which positions children as passive witnesses to domestic violence, and as inevitably pathologised, the research on domestic violence has focused on children as agents who experience domestic violence. The service and policy context in which practitioners work with survivors of domestic violence is oriented towards an understanding that domestic abuse is a phenomenon taking place within the intimate dyad, between two adult actors - an adult victim and an adult perpetrator. Children who experience domestic violence are described in literature as vulnerable, damaged and passive. The impact of trauma is increasingly understood as producing neurological damage for children who live with domestic violence. Professionals often have a desire to provide better support for children and young people, but reproduce quite problematic and pathologising understandings of children who experience domestic violence.

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