• Happy and confident
• Supportive relationships
• Healthy
• Education and training
• Meaningful employment
• Economically secure
• Recreation and leisure
• Safe
  • Road deaths
  • Assault mortality
  • Criminal victimisation
  • Fear of crime
  • Bullying at school
  • Violence at home
• Active citizens

Safe

Desired outcome

Young people are safe on the roads and in their homes, schools and communities, with freedom from bullying, victimisation violence and avoidable injury. 

Introduction

Safety is a fundamental aspect of wellbeing.  Protecting young people from harm means working to ensure they are physically safe, and that they feel safe in their homes, schools and wider community.  While children are primarily dependent on others for their physical and emotional wellbeing, adolescents and young adults are increasingly able to take some responsibility for their own safety.  Learning to manage risky or unsafe situations is an important part of growing up. 

At the most extreme, violence and accidental injuries are life-threatening.  In other instances, they affect young people’s quality of life, causing pain and incapacity, or reducing their choices about how they live their lives.  Psychological impacts of violence and injury can be significant for victims, friends and family. 

Crime and fear of crime has implications for society as a whole and may act to reduce social cohesion within communities.  Fear of crime may discourage young people from going out, or mean that they avoid particular areas or places.  The financial costs of violence and avoidable injury are also high – with costs associated with medical care, law enforcement, and loss of work-force productivity.

Indicators

Indicators in this section cover both subjective measures of safety such as fear of crime and objective indicators of wellbeing, including road deaths, criminal victimisation and assault mortality rates.  These indicators record both extreme outcomes of violence and injury that result in death, as well as examples of physical or psychological violence such as bullying that affect quality of life.

The first indicator, road deaths, provides information about the most significant cause of death in the youth age group.  The second indicator is the assault mortality rate among young people aged 15 to 24, which measures deaths due to intentional violence. 

The third and fourth indicators provide a picture of young people’s experience of crime.  The third, criminal victimisation, relies on self-reported survey data rather than police records, as many crimes are not reported to the police.  This is particularly the case for sexual crimes and family violence.  The fourth indicator reports on young people’s fear of crime and the impact this has on their quality of life.

Home and school are critical environments for young people. The remaining two indicators report on young people’s experiences of bullying at school, and of witnessing violence in the home.

Use the links on the left to explore the indicators in this domain.