Dr. Nina Paplia has been awarded a Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) fellowship from the Australian Research Council to examine childhood maltreatment.
The fellowship will help Papalia identify links between child abuse and domestic violence with re-victimisation and offending.
“I’m hugely grateful to have received this award, which would not have been possible without the support of CFBS colleagues,” Dr. Papalia said.
“My hope is that the work will provide cues to orient more targeted initiatives to better prevent re-victimisation and offending in at-risk children, at the earliest possible point in the life-course.”
“It also offers an important opportunity to inform the proposed expansion of child and adolescent forensic mental health services in Victoria.”
Approximately 170,000 children receive child protective services and over two million Australian adults say they witnessed domestic violence as children.
This often leads to a pattern of offending and delinquency which can carry through to one’s adult years.
Dr. Papalia says reducing these trends is an urgent policy issue.
“There is enormous potential to interrupt intergenerational patterns of violence and offending in our community,” she says.
“This project will provide new evidence to inform policy and assist services to better protect at-risk children and support them to navigate adolescence without becoming entrenched in the justice system.”
