‘Thinking and doing’: children’s and young people’s understandings and experiences of intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA)

This chapter is updated from the first edition and presents three types of research that have examined children and young people’s relationships with intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA). Firstly, Lombard’s research explores how young people (from the ages of 11 to 21) understand and talk about violence – which may or may not focus upon personal experiences. Secondly, Barter’s research which focuses specifically on analysing young people’s personal experiences of the violence within their own relationships (generally from age 14 onwards. For ease of reference, we term the former – researching understandings of IPVA and the latter researching experiences of IPVA. We then introduce Farrelly’s work, that draws upon Lombard’s methods, to conduct an evaluation of a school prevention programme. We present an overview of our research, the methods used and the main findings, demonstrating that whether the research is about understandings or personal experiences, many of the themes are consistent. We conclude the chapter by making a strong justification for preventative education to start in primary schools with a clear and consistent focus upon gender equality.