There is a need for training on issues involving domestic violence for all professionals engaged in the family law system including, solicitors, counselors, mediators, family report writers and the judiciary. The system currently responds to families, where there are issues of violence and abuse from a 'partnership breakdown' perspective. That is, it approaches these families assuming that the central problem is one of the adults in the relationship no longer wanting to live together. This approach invisiblizes issues of violence and abuse in decision-making and inappropriate and unsafe parenting orders can result. Such a framework views the separation as largely irrelevant to the issues facing the family, identifies the violence as the central problem, recognizes that violence continues after separation and that abuse of children may be part of the pattern of violence.
Domestic violence has short, medium and long-term consequences on women and children.
For children, it manifests in different ways at different stages of a child's life. Children are affected by domestic violence in their environment whether or not they are the direct target of the abuse, they witness, hear, sense the tension in the home. It is increasingly recognized that witnessing domestic violence by children is a form of child abuse. There is significant data now available which establishes the links between spousal and child abuse. In fact there is evidence that the presence of domestic violence can be an indicator of direct child abuse.