Children at DV incidents
To help combat domestic and family violence the Australian Capital Territory arm of the Australian Federal Police, ACT Policing, began the Family Violence Intervention Program in May 1998. The program maintains a database on family violence incidents with the aim of assisting ACT Policing to improve its responses to such incidents. The incidents recorded in the database include each occurrence of family violence in the ACT in which police were either involved or notified, and include events leading up to police arrival at an incident and during police presence. For the year 2003-04, a total of 1,625 children were recorded as being present at 44 percent of family violence incidents (n=1,231). The figure below, drawn from an AIC analysis of the data, shows the age breakdown of children recorded as being present at family violence incidents from 2001-02 to 2003-04. For each year of the program, age was known for about 80 percent of all children present, with approximately half the children aged between 11 and 17 years for 2003-04.
AIC article
