Practice Guidelines

Healing our children and young people: A framework to address the impacts of domestic and family violence

This healing framework supports practitioners, leaders, and policymakers to provide better responses to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who have experienced domestic and family violence and have come into contact with child protection systems.

At the centre of the framework are children and young people and the commitment to holding them at the heart of decisions and practice.  The framework is built upon five healing pillars:

• Supporting safety
• Strong cultural identity
• Family and community
• Strong deadly relationship
• Strengthening spirits

For practitioners: Using key actions, reflective questions and additional resources detailed in this framework, you can improve your responses to First Nations children and young people and support healing and recovery.

For organisations: the ‘skills and attributes’ section of the framework will support you to build a training and development pathway to facilitate practitioner development.

For leaders and policy makers: A series of reflective questions, designed to challenge and generate new knowledge about system level changes can support you to implement effective responses for First Nations children and young people

This framework is designed to be implemented in local contexts, to meet local needs. It has been built from knowledge generated through participatory action research methods led by First Nations community researchers in regional and remote Queensland locations.