Relevant for experienced and emerging social work and human service practitioners alike, this book explores the uniquely challenging, yet seemingly ubiquitous issue of youth violence. It provides an authentic and accessible discussion of the theories and evidence that inform practice with youth violence alongside the voices of practitioners and the young people they work with. These voices are drawn from work with the Name.Narrate.Navigate (NNN) program for youth violence. NNN provides a trauma-informed, culturally safe preventive-intervention for young people who use and experience violence, and specialist training for the workers who support them. The program embraces creative methods as a bridge between contemporary evidence on trauma and violence and Aboriginal healing practice. The dual focus of the program is informed and interconnected by action research involving Aboriginal Elders and community members, practitioners, and key service stakeholders, including young people with a lived experience of violence. This book is ideal for use in professional cross-disciplinary programs, such as criminology, sociology, social work, and psychology, across post-secondary, vocational, and university sectors. <!----> <!----> <!----> <!---->

Systems and structures designed to protect and support young people, specifically (in this paper) young women, are ironically the same systems that maintain gender disparity. Consequently, this has influenced the embodied identities of young women who experience and use violence. Such systemic and structural intersectionality has impacted upon and is enacted through generations of women, especially those who are more likely to be disproportionately impacted by micro and macro layers of discrimination due to age, race, religion, dis/ability and socioeconomic status. This paper draws on the narratives and experiences of 24 young women aged 13–18 who have experienced and used nonfatal violence. Their narratives chart the role of systemic oppression, community expectations, hierarchical group dynamics and identity formation in their experiences of violence. Findings centre on the experiences of young women, their words providing insight into motivators and drivers of female violence, which to date has been under‐researched and often poorly understood.

This chapter discusses empathy and its relevance to youth violence. It provides an overview of the ways empathy has been conceptualised and the theorised links between empathy and youth violence. It considers how young people who use and experience violence articulate empathy and how this is shaped by context and circumstance. The chapter describes the person-centred, social empathy–informed approach used in the Name.Narrate.Navigate (NNN) program. It provides examples of experiential learning activities used and the narratives they elicited from young people. These narratives challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about the potential role of empathy in youth violence. <!----> <!----> <!----> <!---->

Youth violence is a uniquely challenging, yet seemingly ubiquitous, context for contemporary social work and human services. The use and experience of violence by young people are often intertwined and commonly associated with individual, familial, and community experiences of disconnection and disadvantage. This chapter outlines issues of definition and terminology, scope and scale as well as conceptualisation and understandings of youth violence. Existing evidence is complemented with commentary from practitioners, collected as part of pilot work preceding the development of the Name.Narrate.Navigate (NNN) program for youth violence. <!----> <!----> <!----> <!---->

This chapter considers the role of emotions in young people’s use of violence. It provides an overview of evidence suggesting young people who use violence may experience difficulties with emotional recognition and regulation and shares practitioner reflections on how justice-involved young people in the Name.Narrate.Navigate (NNN) program for youth violence express, experience, and engage with emotions. It also shows emotions as relationally, contextually, and culturally bound and shows how this awareness informs a relationship-based approach to practice. The chapter concludes by highlighting how NNN uses visual methodologies including Photovoice to stimulate narrative storytelling towards a shared understanding of experience and emotion. <!----> <!----> <!----> <!---->

Where we find and form identity and belonging, meaning and purpose, is often entangled in the dynamics that play out between people and place, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, the legacy and ongoing experience of invasion and colonisation. Place-based understandings of identity and its importance in shaping young people’s experience of what is possible and probable in their futures might be critical to framing cross-cultural work with young people impacted by violence and trauma. This paper draws on practitioner reflections of work with young Aboriginal women both on, and off Country, highlighting common and distinct themes related to identity formation and migration in navigating new futures. These include connection to Country and spiritual connection, family and kinship relationships, Women’s Business and felt cultural safety. The findings illustrate a meaningful parallel instructive to practice; for both young women and practitioners, access to cultural knowledge and connection is strengthened by endorsement and in turn strengthens understanding and experienced safety. This work emphasises the importance of creating culturally connected opportunities, sensitive to dynamics of place, to support positive identity expression and wellbeing.