Exploring the 'best interests' principle: 'Home' after parental separation for children and young people who have experienced domestic abuse.

This paper was first published in Family Matters: Essays in Honour of John Eekelaar, eds Jens Scherpe and Stephen Gilmore (Intersentia, 2022) 853–68, and prior to the introduction into the House of Representatives on 29 March 2023 of the Family Law Amendment Bill 2023 (Cth). We draw on the responses of 68 Australian children and young people participating in the first major study of the meaning of ‘home’ after relationship separation to explore how home is experienced when children spend time with a father who has perpetrated domestic and family violence and how those experiences might inform our understanding of the operation of the ‘best interests’ principle. Responses suggested the complexity of home for children spending time with fathers who had used violence, the considerable emotional work required of them to maintain those relationships, the importance of engaging with their experiences as a central aspect of the best interests assessment — along with ongoing inattention to that need, and the value of their descriptions of home in conveying a sense of what they saw as being in their best interests.