There is an increasingly shared discourse and understanding about the centrality of Coercive Control in experiences of family violence. Coercive Control is broadly conceptualised as a range of tactics and/or behaviours intended to intimidate, humiliate, degrade, exploit, isolate and control, usually an intimate partner. And we have come to understand Coercive Control as an assault on autonomy, liberty and equality. However, most definitions have tended to describe adults’ experiences of this construct.  Yet this is the world that children living in family violence have to navigate.

Children are of course mentioned as being impacted, even used as a tool of control, but the discourse has remained strongly focused on how children experience being exposed to the violent and abusive tactics used by one adult toward another, rather than how they experience the behaviours themselves.   This presentation will consider Coercive Control in terms of its meaning for and impact on children, alongside some of the ways that we at the Australian Childhood Foundation think that as adults and practitioners we can respond to their hurt.  Within this presentation, we will articulate: