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MCM (Melbourne City Mission) is celebrating the success of its groundbreaking Amplify Program, following the release of an independent evaluation by RMIT’s Centre for Innovative Justice.
In just 18 months, Amplify has shown what’s possible when family violence expertise and youth homelessness support services come together to centre around young people’s voices and experiences. The program - a first of its kind in Australia - is delivering life-changing outcomes for children and young people escaping family violence without a protective parent or guardian.
Young people aged 15-19 years are falling through the cracks in the system and often go unseen. Amplify is closing this critical gap and setting a new benchmark for youth-focused family violence responses, making these young people safer, more supported, and able to become empowered to reconnect with their life goals.
Amplify was created off the back of a report Amplify: Turning up the Volume on Young People and Family Violence (2021), which recommended clear actions for a specialist case management response for unaccompanied children and young people who have been left as silent victims, falling through the gaps of existing, siloed systems.
With funding from Family Safety Victoria and the National Partnership Agreement, MCM was able to embed family violence specialists including peer workers directly within youth homelessness services, ensuring that young people could access support where they were most likely to present.
The Amplify program provides youth specific family violence case management for young people aged 15-19 with complex family violence risk that cannot be managed within specialist family violence services or child and family services. The program provides targeted and therapeutic family violence intervention and support to young people who are escaping family violence and present alone without a protective parent to a youth homelessness service.
The evaluation found Amplify is filling this systemic gap and consistently exceeding expectations:
'The evaluation showed clearly how crucial it is to have a specialist and youth-informed response in the settings to which young people present," said Elena Campbell, Associate Director at the Centre for Innovative Justice, RMIT University.
"Being supported with their housing needs while also being able to explore questions of safety and risk made a key - and sometimes lifesaving - difference to evaluation participants. Young people told us that Amplify practitioners were the first to have ever listened - drawing on specialist skills and engaging with them on a genuine and pragmatic level, guided by what each young person needed."
Amplify’s success lies in its intensive, holistic support, centred on the voices of young people. For many, Amplify was the first time they felt believed and respected.
One participant said:
“[My Amplify practitioner] was very, very supportive, you know, she wasn’t like just interested in getting it over with. She was interested in making sure I felt cared about and respected in our conversations.”
Another reflected:
“My goal was … I wanted to be someone who wasn’t self-harming. I wanted to be someone who was happy and actually wanted to live and wanted to be around.”
These experiences show how Amplify is not only reducing immediate risk but also laying the foundations for recovery, healing, and hope.
The flexible, client-centred model includes outreach, peer workers with lived experience, and family violence practitioners working side by side with youth homelessness services. This approach allows practitioners to see young people as whole people. By doing this, Amplify has helped young people not only escape violence but also return to school, build protective relationships, and enjoy the simple joys of adolescence.
“Children and young people’s experiences of domestic, family and sexual violence are a key priority for the Commission, as identified in our inaugural Yearly Report to Parliament in 2024. We have heard, from children and young people themselves, but also from those who love and care for them, that too frequently their voices are absent from informing the services that should be supporting them.
"Centering the voices of children and young people at every stage of program design, from inception to evaluation, has made a difference not only for the young people in this program, but for the program itself.” – Micaela Cronin, Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence Commissioner.
The evaluation highlights Amplify’s contribution to new knowledge and sector-wide learning, strengthening how services respond to young people experiencing family violence and homelessness. Through capacity building, other services are enabled to build greater capacity across the social and government services system.
The program has been extended until June 2026 which is a welcome step forward in ensuring young people continue to receive the support they deserve. And with waitlists and proof that this program works, it’s a reminder that urgent support and continued investment is required.
“We welcome the Victorian Government’s recognition of the importance of youth-specific family violence responses and the extension of Amplify until June 2026. But this is just the beginning. To truly close this systemic gap, we need to see programs like Amplify expanded across Victoria and nationally. Every young person deserves to be seen, heard and safe from violence.” said Shorna Moore, Head of Policy and Advocacy.
Since Amplify, I haven’t been close to violence again. Amplify broke the cycle for me, and built me back up from my broken pieces. Even as I moved through refuges and into supported housing, my case worker and peer worker never left my side. Amplify wasn’t just a program — it was people who believed in me and helped me believe in myself. I am a young person who fell through the gaps like so many others whose stories end up as statistics. My generation will be the next leaders. We deserve a seat at the table now when decisions are made about the problems that affect us most.
