26 NOVEMBER, 2024
Who: Charles Darwin University Lecturer in Early Childhood Dr Toni McCallum. Dr McCallum’s research focuses on the effect of complex trauma on children exposed to domestic and family violence.
Topics:
- NT Coroner’s recommendations following the landmark inquest into the domestic violence deaths of four Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory.
- Domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV) prevention, including community-based approaches.
- Culturally responsive and appropriate resources for DFSV prevention.
- The effectiveness of working with children and their parents to prevent DFSV.
Contact details: Call +61 8 8946 6721 or email media@cdu.edu.au to arrange an interview.
Quotes attributable to Dr Toni McCallum:
"It is disappointing that even though the Coroner addresses the urgent need for early intervention for young people engaged in violence (as victims and perpetrators of violence) and community based approaches to child welfare in Recommendations 15 and 16, schools were not part of the conversation. Young children spent a huge part of their lives at school.
“Evidence suggests that early intervention is crucial in DFSV prevention. We should be starting at primary school with five-year-olds, building resilience in young children and teaching them tools to stand up to coercive and abusive adults in their lives.
“We need to work with local families and communities of schools to raise community awareness of DFSV and start to call out the behaviours of violence. Particularly we need to massively expand culturally appropriate men's behaviour change programmes.
“Charles Darwin University has an important role to play in training a localised domestic, family and sexual violence prevention workforce. The Coroner has made this recommendation (Recommendation 3) in her findings. This training must be trauma-informed, culturally appropriate and co-designed with local relevant Aboriginal agencies.
“The Coroner has highlighted that the rates of domestic, family and sexual violence are so much higher in the NT than other states because we have a unique set of circumstances here. Colonisation, racism, intergenerational trauma and a lack of culturally appropriate healing services for the victim/survivors of DFSV and the perpetrators. In the NT this results in something called 'lateral violence' - stemming from 'internalised colonisation' and 'internalised sexism'. Local problems require local solutions.”
Contact details:
Raphaella Saroukos she/her
Research Communications Officer
Marketing, Media & Communications
Larrakia Country
T: +61 8 8946 6721
E: media@cdu.edu.au
W: cdu.edu.au
