Experts testified before federal politicians on links between domestic violence and suicide during hearings in Melbourne on Thursday.
Child victim-survivors of family violence lacked specialised support, despite research showing that put kids on a trajectory towards being domestic abusers themselves in later life, the inquiry heard.
"For boys in particular, where that trauma is unresponded to, is untreated, it's not deterministic, but it puts them on a pathway," violence against women scholar Kate Fitz-Gibbon said.
No state or territory has a specialist children's domestic and family violence service, she told the committee, with young people often left with no option but to tell teachers who are learning "on the job".
"Even if that disclosure goes well, if that conversation goes well, we know that they then face a service system that is adult-centric, that does not see them", Professor Fitz-Gibbon said.
It was revealed violence content is absent from the syllabuses of education and most social work degrees.
"There's no child-centric thing in any discipline", Prof Fitz-Gibbon said.
"You can easily graduate from an undergraduate degree in social work without having any specialist training in family violence ... by virtue of the prevalence of victimisation, they will come across it."
They highlighted findings that 40 per cent of Australian children will be raised in a home where there is domestic and family violence, according to the 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study.
The study's recommendations for targeting child victim-survivors more precisely and broadening training have gone unanswered more than 1000 days since it was released, the committee was told.
Academics referenced the killing of 11-year-old Luke Batty by his father in 2014, where family violence services lacked a nuanced approach to the unique danger Luke faced in the lead-up, focusing entirely on his mother Rosie.
"Child victim-survivors have distinct risks and needs, yet we still don't have a service system response that can respond to that," Prof Fitz-Gibbon said.
Perpetrators of family violence were 2000 times more likely to have experienced suicidal ideation, family violence researcher Jess Woolley said in her testimony, citing research conducted in Victoria.
The overlap of violent tendencies and mental health issues caused headaches for police in that state, she told the committee, who reported mentally ill perpetrators evading justice through an overworked health system.
"The perpetrator might be released into the community ... leaving the victim-survivor without that additional protection", Dr Woolley said.
Experts strongly favoured more national consistency and inter-agency communication to stem family violence.
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