Prevention
2 in 5 Australian children are exposed to family violence.*
Primary prevention aims to address the underlying causes of violence – disrespect, gender inequality, power imbalances, and cultural norms that excuse or tolerate violence. The Australian Government has committed to ending family violence in a generation, yet prevention receives less than 5% of allocated funding.** Without meaningful investment in prevention, how can we expect change?
To prevent and eliminate family violence, there is a critical need to engage children and young people.
Alongside the urgent safety and justice reforms, we must not lose focus on the environments and social conditioning that shape our young people. How do these environments influence our behaviours and attitudes? Why do the experiences and voices of young people matter? Are there alternative ways institutions can support positive change?
Primary prevention programs, as featured in It Starts With Us, consider these questions when designing programs for working with young people.
Responding to the current epidemic of family violence requires multiple pathways of action that address the urgent impacts of crisis, the need for short-term preventative reforms and the longer term structural and systemic changes that will ultimately shift Australia’s normalisation of violence.
To read more about prevention in Australia, visit ANROWS, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety.
*Australian Child Maltreatment Study, 2023
**Australia lacks consistent data on funding allocated to family violence prevention. This statistic has been derived from a range of sources in different states.
Prevention in action
Project O was a fully piloted and evaluated family violence prevention initiative delivered by Big hART 2015 – 2025, benefiting young people living in communities with high rates of family violence.
Beginning in 2015 in North West Tasmania, Project O rolled out in six sites nationally, trialing six unique program designs, tailored to place. Over ten years Project O built an evidence base for effective program design targeting young people aged 11-18. The program was highly effective in building confidence, agency, creative skills, student voice, and literacies in family violence and prevention issues, for young people in family violence hotspots. Nationally, the program raises awareness of the criticality of primary prevention, amongst the spectrum of all family violence strategies.
Project O’s unique prevention model involves positive role modelling and mentorship, supporting at-risk young people to achieve new aspirations, knowledge and life choices.Young people develop skills and confidence, alongside creating art and digital content which is then shared with their peers and communities, and distributed publicly. These creative content platforms are a critical step in Big hART’s approach, ensuring amplification and knowledge share of effective prevention.
Impact in numbers
Over 8 years, Project O supported family violence prevention in 6 sites.
Participants engaged
Skills workshops delivered
mentors and artists contracted
Community and Cultural Development producers employed
cross sector partners
Local, state, and national
positive media stories
Print, radio, and digital media. Averaging one story a week between 2015-2020
reach to combined audiences
Local and national events, social media, print, digital and broadcast media, and online
Rosie Batty AO
Family Violence Prevention Advocate
Fourth Action Plan, 2019,
Federal Government