Outcome
The outcome we want is for police to provide a consistent and effective response to children and young people within a sector-wide approach.
The safety of children and young people will be at the forefront of all Victoria Police responses to family violence, sexual offences and child abuse.
Risks to children and young people will be actively and consistently identified and managed.
We will continue to work with our sector partners to strengthen system-wide approaches to victim survivors who are children and young people, as well as children and young people who use violence.
While children and young people are considered in everything we do, the initiatives under this domain reflect our understanding of the need for a dedicated focus in this area.
Achieved through
We will achieve this outcome as we:
Strengthen identification, management and support of children at risk
Victoria Police will continue to build our understanding of the unique experiences and specific needs of victim survivors of family violence, sexual offences and child abuse who are children and young people, including those who witness or live with violence. This will include improving our identification, response, support and prevention models.
We recognise that the term ‘child’ encompasses multiple age ranges (infant, toddler, child, young person) and understand that experiences may present differently within these stages of childhood.
Initiatives
Flagship initiatives under this domain:
Enhance our child abuse response model
We will build on our existing approach to responding to child abuse by further refining how we prioritise and respond to reports.
We will also strengthen our partnership with Child Protection through improved information sharing. This will support our ability to allocate investigations to people with the right skills and improve the quality of our joint investigations.
Strengthen integration of responses across family violence, sexual offences and child abuse
We will recognise and respond to the complex and often inter-related experiences of children and young people exposed to and/or experiencing violence or abuse. This will include strengthening our identification of all forms of child abuse at family violence incidents.
We will also improve our understanding of the complex drivers of children and young people’s use of violence, ensuring we address any co-occurring victimisation.
We will develop shared capability across Sexual Offence and Child Abuse Investigation Teams (SOCITs), FVIUs and the frontline, and maintain a strong collaborative approach through our Multidisciplinary Centres (MDCs) and other sector partnerships.
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