In line with the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032, which highlights the importance of recognising children as victims in their own right, this report focuses on children and young people who had at least one family and domestic violence (FDV) hospital stay. Understanding how children and young people who experience FDV interact with the health care system, as well as their outcomes, provides evidence for potential intervention and screening points.

FDV is a major health and welfare issue that can have lifelong impacts for victim-survivors and perpetrators. FDV affects people of all ages and from all backgrounds, but mainly women and children, and often occurs in homes and family settings. For children and young people who experience FDV (either directly or indirectly), the harm caused can be serious and long-lasting, affecting their health, wellbeing, education, and social and emotional development. 

This study examined FDV and other hospital stays, emergency department presentations, Medicare-subsidised health service use and deaths, using longitudinal, linked data from the National Health Data Hub. To gain a broader understanding of the impacts of FDV, this project also examined the differences between the study cohort and either the Australian population, or a more specific comparison group of young people who had an injury-related hospital stay as a child over the same period.

Key findings

• Every day, on average, one child has an FDV-related hospital stay.
• just over half (54%) were female and the remainder were male (46%).
• Around one-third (33%) were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
• Over one-third (37%) had their first FDV hospital stay before the age of 5.
• Most commonly, the first FDV hospital stay occurred as a baby (before age one).
• Of all FDV hospital stays, 62% were due to a parent perpetrator and 25% were due to another family member.

The authors note that not all young people with injuries or conditions due to FDV are able to attend, or are taken by a caregiver to, hospital for treatment, and of those that do, relatively few are admitted from emergency departments to hospitals. Of those that are admitted to hospital not all are able to disclose the cause of the injury or condition, or the perpetrator's relationship to them. As a result, hospital admission data underestimates the true number of FDV-related injuries and conditions among young people.