The death of a parent through intimate partner homicide (IPH) – when a current or former intimate partner kills the other – is a profound and complicated loss for a child. This act of violence generally deprives them of both caregivers: the deceased victim parent, and the perpetrator, who may have died by suicide or be incarcerated (Liem & Roberts, 2009; Steeves et al., 2011). IPH is a globally gendered phenomenon that disproportionately victimises women, meaning that bereaved children tend to survive their mother (United Nations, 1989; Stöckl et al., 2013). These children are also likely to have experienced prior exposure to violence in the home and may themselves witness the homicide, be physically harmed, or have one or more siblings killed at the same time (Alisic et al., 2017a; Jaffe et al., 2012; Lewandowski et al., 2004; Steeves et al., 2011). A systematic review of health and wellbeing after IPH shows that child survivors are at risk of poor psychological, social, and physical outcomes, such as symptoms of post-traumatic stress, attachment difficulties, developmental regression, eating and feeding problems, and school dropout (Alisic et al., 2015). Another important, though under-researched, consequence of bereavement is disruption to, and sudden loss of, the child’s home.

Home, at its simplest, can be understood as one’s place of permanent residence. Yet the idea of home transcends the physical and is deeply entwined with experiences of the self, family, safety and belonging (Allen & Crow, 1989; Birdwell-Pheasant, 1999). Its significance is revealed in its recurrence as a central theme across philosophy, literature, and culture; Odysseus’s tumultuous journey home is central to Homer’s Odyssey, while the proverb, “home is where the heart is”, tells us that home is located in the emotional rather than the physical. Many researchers have underscored the developmental significance of home for children as a space that is inextricably tied to family (Bowlby et al., 1997; Finch & Hayes, 1994). The centrality of the home for a child’s development is well captured by Bachelard (1969 as cited in Mallett, 2004), who described the home as a “first universe” that “shelters our daydreaming, cradles our thoughts and memories and provides us with a sense of stability”. It is also important to consider how ideas of home might differ among Indigenous and nomadic peoples compared to the somewhat romanticised and localised ideas presented above. For example, meanings of home are fundamentally relational for many First Peoples, representing complex interconnections between family, plants, animals, Country, spirituality, and one’s ancestors (Anderst et al., 2024; Bowra et al., 2021). Mallett (2004) interrogates these diverse meanings in a review of literature on reoccurring ideas of home across multidisciplinary fields, before arriving at a description that accounts for some of this complexity. Home, they argue:

…functions as a repository for complex, inter-related and at times contradictory socio-cultural ideas about people’s relationship with one another, especially family, and with places, spaces, and things. It can be a dwelling place or a lived space of interaction between people… and can be associated with feelings of comfort, ease, intimacy, relaxation and security and/or oppression, tyranny and persecution (p. 84.)

In the context of IPH, such an account is useful in acknowledging that home may never have been a place of safety for some bereaved children as well as highlighting ways its loss can reverberate beyond immediate displacement from the physical home. This is well demonstrated by a study that explored meaning making in 12 Israeli women whose mothers were killed by their fathers (Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al., 2022). Participants’ loss was understood in terms of total destruction of one’s home and its supposed function as a bedrock of safety, trust, and belonging from which the self is constructed in relation to significant others. With these foundations decimated from within the home, and by someone with responsibility for paving these cornerstones of love and support, these women described feeling “alone” and with “nothing” in an unstable world, while also fearing what violent destruction might follow their attempts to rebuild new foundations from this wreckage (Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al., 2022).

IPHs generally herald dramatic change in surviving children’s experience of home. There is usually immediate removal from the family home, often now a designated crime scene, to be placed in unfamiliar environments or with extended family members whose caring capacity is likely compromised by their own traumatic grief (Harris-Hendriks et al., 2000). A study from the United States found that 87% of children were moved from their home after their mother was murdered, with 47% going to live with maternal relatives, 12% with the perpetrator’s family, 10% being split up between the mother’s and perpetrator’s relatives, and 9% going to live elsewhere (e.g., into foster care; Lewandowski et al., 2004). Such displacement can disrupt routine, friendships, and other supportive networks via impact on proximity to schools, local neighbourhoods, and community groups (e.g., church and sport). Transition and adjustment to new homes may be further destabilised by carer instability, separation from siblings and pets, exposure to continued violence, conflicts of loyalty between maternal and paternal sides of the family, and perpetrator parent influence where still alive (Armour, 2002; Harris-Hendriks et al., 2000; Hardesty et al., 2008; Steeves et al., 2011). Many of these experiences are also underscored by a denial of children’s agency to be involved in decision making regarding where, and with whom, they would like to live following the homicide (Sorbring & Kuczynski, 2018; Alisic et al., 2017b).

Child survivors of IPH remain neglected victims; a neglect that is reflected in the literature. Very few studies have directly engaged with these individuals to give voice to their experiences and perspectives (see Alisic et al., 2017b; Steeves et al., 2011) and none, to our knowledge, have explicitly focussed on the topic of home in this context. This dearth not only perpetuates the silence that surrounds this phenomenon, but also deprives those with lived experience of voice and agency. This qualitative study aimed to address this gap by interrogating a poorly understood, yet central, component of disruption to a child’s life following IPH, their home. In doing so, we hope to improve our understanding of these experiences to better support future victim-survivors.

Method

The present study forms part of a larger collaborative project exploring experiences of people with lived experience as a child of parental intimate partner homicide, the caregivers of children bereaved in this way, and professionals working with this population in Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), and Ireland (Alisic et al., 2023; Eastwood et al., 2025; Kurdi et al., 2024). Only data from those with lived experience of bereavement as a child were included in the present study. The study received ethics approval from the Human Research Ethics Sub-Committee at the University of Melbourne (ID 2057659.1 & 14504) and the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science Research Ethics Committee (ID 281570) in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

Participants

Eligible for inclusion were those aged at least 12 years with lived experience of being bereaved through IPH during childhood (age 0–18 years) and where at least 6 months had elapsed between the death and participation in the research. The final sample included 22 participants, aged 15–52 years (M = 27.90, SD = 10.65). Twelve participants were from Australia and 10 were from the UK; no participants with lived experience were from Ireland. Individual participant characteristics are presented in Table 1. Ethnicity data were not collected for the Australian sample; however, no participant identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Six UK participants identified as White British, two as Black Caribbean and White British, one as Black and White British, and one as British Asian (information for one participant was unavailable). Age has been reported in narrow brackets and available ethnicity information has been omitted from Table 1 to safeguard privacy. Australian and UK data were pooled to increase available data and diversity of experience. Data were treated equivalently as our exploratory aim and procedures were not designed for comparative analysis.

Procedure

Participants were recruited through specialist organisations (e.g., victim support services, clinical services, and advocacy groups) via researcher team networks, advertisement on relevant social media groups, and snowball sampling. Participants were given a copy of the study plain language statement explaining the research, what participation would involve, the possible benefits and risks of participating, and information on accessing additional support. Participants were given the opportunity discuss any concerns or questions before providing informed consent and basic demographics via Qualtrics XM. Consent was recorded orally in two cases where this was not accessible. Young people aged 15 years and above were considered mature minors for the purposes of consent. Our protocol required additional consent from the guardians of young people aged 12 to 14 years; however, our final sample did not include any participants who were younger than 15 years. All interviewers underwent training in consent considerations (e.g., how to assess understanding and ensure participation was free and without coercion), the interview topic list, principles of psychological first aid, and referral options for additional support.

All interviews were conducted online using video conferencing software, except for two interviews in the UK that were completed in person due to participant preference. Procedures were otherwise identical for Australian and UK participants. Interviews were carried out one on one by members of the research team between February 2021 and June 2023 and lasted for approximately 1 hour. Interviews were semi-structured and guided by a topic schedule (see supplementary material). Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed using an automated online service (Otter.ai), after which the transcriptions were checked and corrected for accuracy.

Participant safety was paramount throughout interviewing procedures. All interviewers were required to actively review a recorded interview and participate in a mock interview with a colleague, sitting as both interviewer and interviewee, prior to conducting their first interview. This experiential part of training was followed by collective debriefing to reflect on the experience and lessons learned. Interviewers received training in how to dynamically assess and respond to participant distress. Participants were made aware that they did not have to talk about anything they were not comfortable with and that they could take a break or end the interview at any time they liked. Moreover, the interviews did not probe or focus on experiences of the homicide itself. Participants were also given information about the different forms of psychological support that were available to them and received a wellbeing check at the end of the interview. The interviewer checked in again 2–3 days later and 2 weeks post-interview via phone or email (depending on participant preference) to assess their wellbeing. No adverse events regarding participant distress were recorded during interviews or across subsequent follow-up.

Data Analysis

Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, a method for interrogating patterns of shared meaning in qualitative data sets (Braun & Clarke, 2012, 2022). Reflexive thematic analysis is epistemologically located outside of the positivist tradition; researchers here do not seek to discover some objective truth, but rather, play an active role in knowledge production through their creative and interpretative engagement with the data (Braun & Clarke, 2019). Analytical outputs are thus not waiting to ‘emerge’, but instead lie at the intersection of data richness, theoretical assumptions underpinning analysis, and the skills and resources of the researchers (Braun & Clarke, 2019).

The analytical process recursively worked through Braun & Clarke’s (2006) six phases of data familiarisation, coding, generating themes, reviewing themes, refining and defining themes, and write up. Data familiarisation involved each interview transcript being reviewed and corrected against original audio files. We also took notes during this initial data immersion to capture first impressions and idea development. Coding was conducted by the first and second author and with the use of NVivo software (QSR International, 2020). Our approach to the coding phase was inductive and involved assigning descriptive and/or interpretative labels to segments of interview transcripts. An example of a descriptive code sticking close to participant language is home experienced as unsafe being applied to “…home didn’t feel like a very safe space”. Walking on eggshells is an example of a more interpretive code that was assigned to the following extract “…I was just on edge a lot. I think I was never really sure what would happen. I think I was scared of how my dad would respond to things all the time”. The theme generation phase involved a critical review of all codes and an iterative process of collapsing, refining, or expanding codes with reference back to associated data segments. These codes were then clustered into preliminary themes based on commonalities and differences in relation to the central concept of home experiences. For example, here are some of the clustered codes that eventually gave rise to our second theme about experiences of instability and violence in the home: unstable foster placement, unstable placement with family, calls for silence, threats of violence, home experienced as unsafe, upheaval, sexual abuse. Themes were then reviewed and refined through multiple workshops with other team members, where different interpretations were discussed with continual reference back to raw and coded data. Final themes titles were then agreed upon before being written up with illustrative quotes to support analytic claims and interpretations.

A number of steps were taken to enhance the trustworthiness of our qualitative findings (Ahmed, 2024). Firstly, research memos were used by the team to document initial impressions to interviews and developments in analytic thinking (Birks et al., 2008). Peer debriefing occurred throughout all stages of analysis within the wider research team. This served to scrutinise initial assumptions, introduce alternative perspectives, and ensure consistency between the data and results. The involvement of a team member with lived experience of bereavement was integral in informing safe and meaningful study design, participant experience, and critical engagement with participant accounts. We also shared project updates with participants at least twice a year and invited those interested to be involved in, or give feedback on, reports and advocacy materials. Our approach to analysis and reporting was informed by Braun and Clarke’s (2021) tool for evaluating the quality of reflexive thematic analysis.

It is important to reflect on the position of the researchers given our chosen methodology. Analysis was led by the first and second authors. The first author is an Australian-Tamil female identifying provisional psychologist and researcher with experience working in the family-violence sector. The second author is a White, male identifying psychologist with an interest in childhood trauma and experience in youth and adult mental health services. Our research has also been shaped by the lens of a team that includes individuals from multiple genders, generations, ethnicities, nationalities, and professional disciplinary backgrounds.

Results

Three inter-related themes were developed through thematic analysis of the interview transcripts: (1) home as unfamiliar, (2) continued instability and violence in the home, and (3) redefining and journeying home. Participant pseudonyms are used narratively throughout the following section along with illustrative quotes to support analytical claims.

Home as Unfamiliar

In most cases, participants’ bereavement precipitated a sudden and drastic change to their home environment, often away from the only home they had ever known, to a foreign place in foster care or with extended family of varying degrees of closeness. In this act of physical displacement, participants experienced a shift in home representing the known, to a place of jarring unfamiliarity. The far-reaching consequences of such a transformation and the accompanying losses are well captured in the following quote from Ashton, who felt forced to leave the family home before he and his brother were ready:

I feel quite angry at that… that we were forced to say goodbye to everything that we had known without any say in it whatsoever. And all of our belongings, all of our memories in that home, you know, the routines that we had, the walking to and from school, the, the knowing the person at the local shop, you know, the, the neighbours that we had… we had a great street growing up where it was a, it was a court. So you know, the kids would all play Tiggy back in those days. And they would all get together at the end of the street and hang out after school – Ashton.

Participants often used language that suggested difficulties adapting to life in these new home environments, sometimes self-identifying as “outsiders” in a new place where things were done differently to what was previously known. Ashton described the discomfort associated with being exposed to new and confronting customs regarding privacy that were not in keeping with his previous experience or understanding of what takes place at home:

It wasn’t common practice for us, for example, to just walk into the bathroom when someone was in the shower and go to the toilet. But in this family, it was…. and I’m like, I don’t know how to deal with this, because I’m kind of a guest in your home. But I also feel really uncomfortable with that. And who do I raise this with because last time there were issues I got kicked out – Ashton.

Access to belongings from participants’ previous homes was another important issue that seemed to have implications for feelings of (un)familiarity post-homicide. Participants shared experiences of being denied access to personal and family belongings from their home due to it being designated as a crime scene, uncertainty regarding their placement, or the issue being simply overlooked as something that might have been important. Some participants expressed resentment at being deprived of agency to reclaim objects that may have held special meaning or acted as tangible connection to their pre-homicide home, life, or deceased parent.

There was lots that happened in those first few weeks, like interviews with police, coming home from school and finding the house had been ransacked by police… So there was the funeral, which we weren’t allowed to go to. My grandparents came in and basically had a garage sale and sold all of my mum’s belongings, which, you know, that’s just yeah, that still boggles my mind a little bit to this day – Karla.

Others outlined some of the more practical challenges associated with the loss of all their homely possessions:

…there was the explanations because the social, the social worker, obviously never went to the school to explain why I no longer had my schoolbooks and things like that, because obviously, we’d been taken from our home… And most of our possessions that we had as children were gone – Catherine.

A police liaison officer was helpful in another case in the immediate aftermath of the homicide, by helping to get a young person’s “books out of evidence” from the family home (Amelia). Another participant was similarly able “go back to the house to collect toys and clothes and things” (Emma). When considering the previously described impact of being deprived access to familiar objects from the home, these efforts may present a potentially powerful means of mitigating disconnection from the home and all its symbolic connotations amidst the instability that the homicide creates.

Another important feature of this home-based unfamiliarity centered on how changes to home environments could disrupt relationships and fundamentally alter relational dynamics. When young people were displaced following the homicide, they not only lost the physicality of the home environment, but also key relational support networks that are bound to home via proximity. For example, moving home could deprive young people of established friendships in their neighborhood, sporting teams and other extracurricular groups, time spent with extended family living close by, and entire school communities:

…my relationship with my grandparents became more distant… we lived an hour apart. My dad wasn’t really up to driving me over to my grandparents. And my grandparents, I don’t know, I just I didn’t talk to them. I used to talk to them. When I lived with my mum, I talked to them every day, we talked to my grandmother every day. And that obviously stopped. And, I don’t know, they just kind of… they weren’t part of my life. It wasn’t very easy logistically – Amelia.

… obviously that wasn’t the school I wanted to go to. So my friends weren’t there, my brother’s friends weren’t there, like we didn’t know anyone… so we had become the outsiders because we shouldn’t have been there…So home life, like I say, it was traumatic – Chloe.

There was often a distinct lack of consultation with young people in deciding where, and with whom, they would go to live. For example, Catherine shared her troubling memory of the day she learned of her mother’s murder and its aftermath:

I was at my auntie’s house, who was my father’s sister, and there were family members there. They were all arguing over well, “who would take who? Who would have this one? Who would have that one?” And because it was like, “oh, well, [Catherine’s father] wouldn’t want her going there, he wouldn’t want that one going there.” … it was horrendous… I mean, there, there was still a chalk outline of my mother’s body on my gran’s path.

… that’s what I said to my auntie, we’re not a litter of puppies… “I’ll have that one with the red hair.” You know, “I’ll have that one because that one is only young.” … we were children. We were brothers and sisters” – Catherine.

In this quote, we see Catherine’s extended family prioritise her perpetrator father’s wishes and personal preferences for physical attributes of the children (i.e., age and hair colour) over the agency of each child or any effort to keep the siblings together. Catherine experienced this as dehumanising, comparing her treatment to that of a litter of puppies rather than violently bereaved children, who were haphazardly divvied up between homes across maternal and paternal sides of the family.

While the distance between these new homes would act as a physical barrier to important relationships, these children experienced additional challenges in their new homes that further severed sibling bonds. Catherine described that no efforts were made to facilitate meetings between siblings placed with paternal and maternal households, and that any effort to bridge this division risked being labeled a “traitor to your father” or “disloyal to your mother’s memory”. Another family member sought to forcibly impose new relational dynamics between Catherine and her brothers and sisters after they were separated, as if their kinship was contingent upon sharing the same roof: “They’re not your brother and sister anymore, because I’ve adopted them. So, they are now your cousins. Treat them as cousins”.

Participants told us about various other ways in which changing home environments shifted familiar relational dynamics post-homicide. For example, a few participants moved in with their fathers after their mothers were murdered by new partners and described difficulties adjusting to this being their permanent home rather than a place of temporary visitation. For Amelia, this saw their father transition from a “fun weekend dad” to a “full time parent” of a “really distressed child”. Where participants were not separated from their brothers or sisters, relational changes often manifested in older siblings taking on a parental, rather than a sibling role in new homes: “I became more of a father… rather than a brother. And what I’ve come to kind of realise… is that I missed a whole lot of that brother time because I was being a father” (Ashton).

In some cases, participants came to relate to caregiving aunts, uncles, and grandparents as their parents, particularly when bereaved at a younger age. Caroline wondered whether her grandmother experienced a similar shift after she moved into their home, relating to her as a daughter rather than a granddaughter:

And I think I always had mum’s dresses in my wardrobe. I don’t know why. But Nan always just left her clothes. And this is even as an, as a teenager growing up. She never threw mum’s clothes out. And I think I just must have just become her daughter. My Nan’s daughter, [I] must have replaced my mother in the family – Caroline.

Continued Instability and Violence in the Home

Cultural conceptions of home often conjure images of comfort, permanence, and safety. Yet the homes of many children bereaved by IPH may have never held these qualities due to experiences of prolonged uncertainty, threat and violence leading up to the homicide. And rather than punctuate an end to these experiences, many participants in this study described continued experiences of volatility and danger in their home(s) following the IPH.

When asked about post-homicide experiences of home, participants often shared stories of unstable placements and repeated upheavals across multiple homes in the wake of their traumatic loss. For example, Tessa warned the interviewer to ‘buckle in’ before describing a journey across the many homes that she had experienced in the aftermath of the homicide. Dorris’ experience was similarly characterised by marked instability:

So, before I lost my mum, I was living with, obviously my mum, my brothers and my sister. And then once I lost my mum, then moved in with my dad, which was a big change… a massive change for me. It didn’t, it wasn’t all smooth sailing at all. I lived there for a little while and then I moved back in with my sister, because my sister was still in the family home. There was quite a lot of back and forth. I lived with my grandparents for a little while. So it was quite a lot of back and forth. But I now live with my dad – Dorris.

After the trauma of their initial separation across maternal and paternal family households, Catherine and her siblings continued to be repeatedly shifted between relatives’ homes with no consideration for their individual preferences. At the behest of their perpetrator father, social services seemed complicit in negating Catherine’s agency regarding their desired home, which only catalysed further instability:

Well, I’m gonna go live with my other auntie, who was my mother’s sister, which was smart… And then being contacted by social services, [a] social worker the next day to say, “Well, fine, well, you can stay here for now.” But then I think it was a few months down the line being told, ‘Well, no, now you’re going to have to go and live with either somebody from your father’s family or your grandmother because your father is not happy for you to live here… And then when they got fed up of you, they kind of move you on to another relative – Catherine.

Leo shared a similarly turbulent journey through multiple homes after his mother’s death. This included a brief stay with neighbours, an estranged aunt and uncle, then foster carers, before finally moving in with family friends who became foster carers for Leo and his sister. Leo was clear in reflecting on his placement with an aunt and uncle as wholly inappropriate, describing an experience of neglect and lacking safety due to their caregiver’s criminal involvement and their frequent absence from the home. These experiences of lacking stability, support and safety would persist in his next foster home, where one of his new carers was described as “horrible”, “manipulative” and “aggressive” and as having exploited Leo and his sisters by taking “money from our [victim] mother’s pension”. Leo used the phrase “perpetual state of motion” to capture the chaotic flux of this home-based instability, and identified this as driving a pervasive feeling of uncertainty that seemed to map onto his self-image:

I was kind of uncertain. I was very uncertain a lot of a lot of time. Because we assumed to be someplace one time, someplace another time. I was thinking, this is how it’s gonna be for the whole of my life. Am I just gonna be in some perpetual state of motion? It just created a lot of uncertainty… I never really managed to sort of settle on one characteristic, [I] was a bit of an odd kid. Definitely a very odd kid. So still am arguably” – Leo.

It was clear that Leo understood his post-homicide difficulties as related to systemic failures regarding the safety of foster care placements. His response to a question about what he would like to see changed was telling:

I want to see more effort, I want to see more kids and happy homes, I just want to see more awful people, like, you know, the carers who looked after me and my sister brought to some form of justice. I just want to see it done soon. Because countless people’s lives have been ruined, over something that could absolutely be fixed, if we just had some genuine quality checks, and genuine, like, personality checks – Leo.

Experiences of instability and violence in post-homicide homes, however, were not confined to foster care environments. Like Catherine, Karla lamented having no say in her siblings being split between maternal and paternal grandparents who “hated each other” and where “sibling contact was non-existent”. After taking matters into her own hands to reunite with a brother living with extended family, Karla was forcibly returned to the care of her perpetrator father after he served a short prison sentence. And though this move would see Karla reunited with her siblings, life in this new home – a tent in a caravan park – would be marred by further sexual and physical violence:

So I ended up moving myself out to my brother, who lived with our second cousins. I was only there for three months because then my father took my brother and I back to live with him. We lived in a tent for three months in a caravan park. And then after that, three months, my other brother and sister joined us. Um that only lasted one night; my father sexually abused my sister. And I witnessed that and asked him the next day, my sister and I had a conversation with him and said, “I’m aware of actually what happened and that can’t continue to happen again”. Yeah, he physically abused us, quite significantly, and then we left… we never really had stability, because we sort of, you know, there was lots of backwards and forwards about where, where the children live. So I remained living with my aunt and uncle until I left school, basically. And then sort of made my own way – Karla.

Kai and their siblings were also returned to their father after his release from prison. The threat of violence in the home felt omnipresent for Kai, requiring hypervigilance to their father’s mood, and careful attention to what was left said or unsaid in the home:

Safety wise, I just was never really sure what was gonna happen. And I think I always knew there was there was a possibility of violence in some way, you know, like, even though he was not physically violent. Most of the time, really, the way that I felt in that house was that there was the potential for violence – Kai.

Silence around the homicide and its consequences seemed to be another more insidious form of uncertainty and violence in the home. This silencing was experienced and maintained in various ways. In some cases, participants received explicit messaging that communication about the homicide would not be tolerated in the home. Others learned through implicit modelling or negative responses from caregivers when the topic or related feelings were broached. In this context, home environments were experienced as places of secrecy, stigma, and shame, rather than refuge, comfort, and healing.

…she [grandmother] never spoke about my mum, she never spoke about my dad, she was very closed off, you know if anyone brought it up, it was very you know, she avoided it basically. And so then we felt like we couldn’t talk about it. And then that created a very odd atmosphere in general. So me and me nan, literally until I moved out, we had no relationship whatsoever, it was horrific” – Chloe.

Bereaved at a very young age, Anita’s story demonstrates an extreme example of this silencing and its consequences. After the “disappearance” of her mother, Anita was removed from her father’s care and separated from her siblings due to maltreatment and neglect in the home. She would eventually be returned to her father after he re-partnered with a violent woman who Anita was raised to believe was her mother, only for her father to disappear and reappear with no explanation:

My stepmother took care of us in [city]. And that experience was pretty horrendous. She was very violent. And then dad came home in [decade named], so he was sentenced in [decade named]. And he came home in [decade named]. And he came home and back and lived with us. And I grew up not knowing the story. Not knowing that my stepmom wasn’t my mum, having no memory of my foster family – Anita.

And while wardrobes from popular children’s stories bring forth exciting worlds of fantasy and intrigue, the wardrobe in Anita’s home harbored terrible truths that shattered her world and self-view while exacerbating the threat of violence:

…But finding the newspaper article in a wardrobe that I was never supposed to have gone in when I was about eight years old. And because I was not allowed to go into that wardrobe, I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone what I’d found… I realised my stepmum wasn’t my mum, the place where we visited dad was actually in prison. And this tiny photograph in the newspaper of my mum, my actual mum. All I had and actually going into the wardrobe to look at her was frightening because if I got caught, I felt like I will be beaten – Anita.

Some participants highlighted an important tension between the outward appearance of their physical home and their internal experience of that environment. After reaching out to support services, Amelia felt that a visiting social worker denied their emotional experience based on its perceived incongruence with the sheen and facade of their home:

And, to be honest, I mean, we lived in quite a big house with horses and blah, blah, blah. And she [social worker], like just, I sat, I went and got into her car. And she was basically like, ‘you know, what are you complaining about?’ – Amelia.

Anne similarly felt that support failures in the wake of the IPH stemmed from perceptions of dissonance between their financial standing as a “typical family” with a “nice house and the violence and suffering that took place therein:

…because we were perceived, as I mentioned to you, about our family being perceived as a family of comfort. So a lot of people like, no one, there was no rallying around, all these kids need us or whatever. It was, like everyone just basically, just disappeared – Anne.

Finally, it is important to note that there were some exceptions to the home-based experiences of instability and violence outlined here. Indeed, a few participants were clear in describing post-homicide homes as places of stability, love, and unconditional support. There seemed to be common threads tying these exceptions together, that in many ways speak to the converse of those underscoring core features of this theme; that is, recognition and honouring of pre-existing and positive connections, keeping siblings together, placement with the victim parent’s family, safety considerations, and efforts to prioritise home stability. The following quotes, from a younger and older participant, evocatively capture the personal and protective effects of the above. In both cases, it is clear that these participants experienced life in the home of their maternal grandparents with their sibling, as familiar, safe, and stable, and something they feel great gratitude for:

I feel like what I have already gone through and how we were raised by my grandparents, I think that was definitely the best environment for me and my sister, definitely an ideal environment, even just my family still being here with me and supporting me every single day, that’s definitely, I wouldn’t change a single thing about that – Lily.

I’m so thankful that I lived [with] and was raised by my nan and pop. I wish I knew then what I know now. So I could pass on that gratitude, and really, genuinely say, thank you. I’m so grateful that he [perpetrator father] wasn’t a part of my childhood – Caroline.

Redefining and Journeying Home

Our final theme focuses on the ways in which participants journeyed to reshape experiences and meanings of home in different spaces and capacities after the homicide. The experiences of home-based unfamiliarity and continuing instability and violence explored previously were not necessarily static or final, but rather, were something participants played an active role in negotiating and responding to across their lives.

For Anita, this process seemed to begin soon after learning that her stepmother was not her mother and the truth behind her actual mother’s “disappearance”. In coping with the gravity of these shocking insights and with no external support, Anita sought home in the non-physical, creating a “fantasy world” in which she could retreat to escape the horrors of her actual home. The toilet would become a sanctuary in this ritual where Anita could secretly grieve for her real mother, while simultaneously inhabit an imagined home in which she was loved, cared for, and protected:

What I remember is that if I got beat, I would lock myself in the toilet and I would, I would cry for my mum. And I had this kind of, I think what it did for me, is it kind of created this fantasy world where I, in my despair in which I wanted her, it was like this idea that I had this real mum and this real mum loved me and would take care of me and would stop what was going on. And that kind of became my go to place – Anita.

Anita would eventually escape the violence, secrecy, and physical trappings of her family home after running away as an adolescent. After moving to a new city, she felt embraced by a diverse and welcoming community of people who contrasted not only in terms of experiences in the family home, but also to their wider sense of feeling at home in an ostracising city as a second-generation migrant:

And then I left home when I was 16. And I came to London. And when I came to London, I met a lot of people who were [different], and I didn’t know they were listening to jazz or soul or hip hop. And you know, I suppose I found a community of people who were more accepting of my difference that I that I didn’t really find that in [UK city], I was always different too, a lot of racism. And so when I came to London, and I found people who were, you know, black and mixed, or you know, they were not racist. That was really positive for me – Anita.

Kai described a somewhat similar experience of finding home in a community of “supportive and communicative and open” individuals as an adult, qualities that were sought in response to experiences of isolation, conflict, and lacking safety that characterized life at home with their perpetrator father. In the quote below, we see that this was not something that simply happened to Kai, but was something they played an active role seeking and shaping. Moreover, it is clear that this journeying was understood as integral to Kai’s wellbeing and the process of healing from the isolating self-reliance that stemmed from adverse experiences in the family home.

“And so I think as an adult, you know, moving out of home and figuring out what I wanted in my life, you know. I’ve sort of done the opposite. I’m really surrounded by an amazing community of people who are all very supportive and communicative and open and I’ve really tried to build I guess, a life for myself that really. And so yeah, my home situation in my life now is, like, so, so different than what I grew up with. Because I think I just was searching for that. And I knew that I wouldn’t be a happy or healthy human if I continue to sort of live in a way where I was very, yeah, like, keeping everything to myself and not relying on anybody else – Kai.

Discussion

This study sought to explore experiences of home following bereavement through intimate partner homicide (IPH) during childhood. Thematic analysis of 22 participant accounts from Australia and the UK generated three themes related to experiences of: unfamiliarity in the home; continuing instability and violence; and, a process of reimagining post-homicide meanings of home. The following discussion will explore these findings in relation to existing research, discuss potential implications, before considering strengths and limitations of this work.

Participants’ bereavement catalysed significant disruption to their experience of home that we conceptualised in terms of unfamiliarity in our first theme. One important feature of this shift seemed to be encounters with different, and potentially distressing, customs in new homes that were at odds with participants’ unique understandings and expectations of home life. These alienating experiences could not only act as a barrier to a sense of belonging in new homes and families but could also be seen as holding up a mirror to what had been changed or lost. Some of these experiences echo qualitative findings by Natalier and Johnson (2015), who explored perceptions and experiences of home in 77 young people (aged 18 to 25 years) who had lived in Australia’s out-of-home care system. Young people in this study underscored the significance of daily routine as a critical dimension of home that is important for fostering trust and belonging. We heard accounts from our participants that aligned with these perspectives. For example, feeling like an ‘outsider’ or ‘guest’ in post-homicide homes seemed tied to changes in daily rhythms and confrontation of new ways of living, such as facing unfamiliar neighbours and routes to school or others using the bathroom while showering. Such experiences intersect with and threaten other critical dimensions of home as understood by young people in the study by Natalier and Johnson (2015); namely, feelings of emotional well-being or the sense of ‘being at home’ (Mallett, 2004), and having control over one’s environment. Experiences in our study were similarly often defined by the absence of comfort, safety, and personal agency. These results collectively highlight the importance of services and caregivers being attuned to dimensions of home that extend beyond housing and shelter. Efforts to maintain routine, honour prior customs, and prioritise children’s agency in deciding where and with whom they would like to live present a means of laying the necessary foundations for a renewed sense of home in the wake of what has been lost.

Access to belongings from the family home was another important issue that seemed helpful in mitigating distress, disruption to daily life, and disconnection to participants’ prior homes. Experiences in this domain were noticeably varied; while some were able to access desired possessions (e.g., clothes, toys, and books), this occurred through inconsistent and ad hoc processes rather than any formalised means. More often than not, participants shared stories of being denied access to belongings, there being a lack of consultation on the issue and their associated anger and resentment. These reflections are consistent with reports from other children and young people bereaved by IPH (Alisic et al., 2017b) and family members of homicide victims more generally (Connolly & Gordon, 2015). Access to transitional objects from the home, such as cherished toys and blankets, also have developmental significance in terms of their role in supporting children’s capacity for self-regulation, healthy attachment, and individuation (Litt, 1986; Winnicott, 1951). The emotional significance of personal items in connection to one’s sense of self and home is also well recognised and honoured in the literature on nursing homes (Nygaard et al., 2020; Rijnaard et al., 2016), disaster recovery (Eyre & Payne, 2006; Harel, 2020; Sappat & Esnard, 2016), and migration (Boccagni, 2023; Pérez & Boccagni, 2022). Our results suggest that services and caregivers should recognise the potential significance of home-based belongings, actively consult with children on this issue, and work to facilitate access where possible. This relatively pragmatic and actionable approach might also have positive flow on effects for other dimensions of home, such as bolstering children’s sense of agency, maintenance of routine, and emotional wellbeing (Natalier & Johnson, 2015).

Separation from one’s siblings was a common consequence of IPHs in this study. Participants’ reflections on this experience, alongside cases where these relationships were maintained, underscore the importance of honouring the sibling relationship following an IPH. Participant accounts here were imbued with a sense of shock and resentment at their lack of involvement in these decisions following the traumatic loss of their parent(s). In failing to consult with children and young people on the maintenance of relationships with their siblings, new carers and service systems deprive them of a potential source of ongoing love and strength though current and future adversity. Indeed, siblings have been described as such by bereaved children elsewhere (Alisic et al., 2017b) while the foster care literature generally supports the nurturing of sibling bonds in placement decisions (Herrick & Piccus, 2005; Washington, 2007). Sibling relationships are uniquely poised to provide connection to a shared history, a sense of belonging, and a relational framework from which to develop one’s identity and a healthy self-esteem (Elgar & Head, 1999). It is, of course, important to acknowledge that sibling relationships will not always be protective. Careful and ongoing assessment is needed to ensure that placement with siblings will not hamper recovery or be an additional source of trauma or harm (Herrick & Piccus, 2005). Finally, existing qualitative work has shown that siblings may have different experiences and perspectives on issues such as placement preference or their perpetrator parent (Alisic et al., 2017b). Caregivers and services should be attuned to this and not assume that all the children in a family group will share the same wants and needs.

We heard distressing stories of instability and violence in post-homicide home environments from many participants in this study, which are, sadly, not unique to this group. This is consistent with reports from children in residential and foster care (Euser et al., 2013; Konjin et al., 2019; Rock et al., 2015) and those bereaved by parental IPH during adolescence, where unstable living arrangements and ongoing physical and sexual abuse were common features of post-homicide experiences (Steeves et al., 2011). Services scaffolding support for children must not assume that the IPH marks the end of risk once housing needs have been met. Children’s physical and emotional safety, alongside their preferences, should be paramount through this process and must be regularly re-assessed across development. Practitioners should also engage in collaborative reflective practice to interrogate personal biases regarding placement and safety given accounts we heard regarding dismissive assumptions made about the outward appearance of participants’ homes/families and their needs and level of risk. Moreover, practitioners need to be aware of the potential loyalty binds facing children and how implicit and/or explicit pressure from maternal and perpetrator kin might affect their capacity to safely assert their preferences. Failure to do so may not only undermine children’s agency, but also place them at risk of further harm via a lost opportunity to safer relationships and more stable attachments within sensitive developmental windows. These pressures can also complicate children’s sense making around the homicide. For example, their understanding of who is the victim and perpetrator, the culpability of the perpetrator, and comprehension of the murder itself.

It is well established that placement instability in care increases the risk of negative outcomes for many children across social, behavioural, emotional, academic, and neurobiological domains (Aarons et al., 2010; Akin et al., 2015; Fisher et al., 2006; Humphreys et al., 2015; Rock et al., 2015). Given this, and the prevalence of home-based instability reported in this study, it is important to consider how to best support stable placements for children bereaved by IPH. The foster care literature offers some key learnings for promoting placement stability, and thus, reducing the risk of harm to bereaved children in the future. A systematic review and narrative synthesis of quantitative and qualitative literature on placement instability (involving 19,488 and 475 children respectively) has identified several key protective factors (Rock et al., 2015). These include placement with kinship (i.e., related) carers (versus non-relative foster carers); placement with siblings (particularly where children have caregiving responsibilities and a sense of feeling needed by their siblings); child involvement in decision making regarding placement preferences; child-centred motivations for fostering; carer support for academic and life skills development; strong carer-child relationship characterised by good communication, unconditional care, patience and acceptance; and placement with older, more experienced foster carers with strong parenting skills (Rock et al., 2015). The exceptional experiences of safe, stable, and supportive homes in this study seem to align with some of these protective factors and should serve to guide post-homicide placement decisions and child-carer intervention. Many of these factors are targeted by existing evidence-based interventions for foster families, which could be leveraged in support of bereaved children and their caregivers (see Leve et al., 2012 for a review of supported interventions across early/middle childhood and adolescence).

In addition to the types of interventions outlined above, our results offer some therapeutic guidance for practitioners working with bereaved children and their families. Firstly, practitioners should be cognisant of the likely disruption to children’s experience of home and attend to this as a topic of clinical relevance using age-appropriate methods. Traumatic-grief focussed cognitive behavioral therapy (TGF-CBT) has been shown to be a potentially effective treatment for post-traumatic stress symptoms in children and young people bereaved by parental IPH (Soydas et al., 2023). Practitioners could use components from this model to help children understand and process grief related to the loss of their home and all it represents alongside their parent(s). This might be facilitated by important objects from the home, imagery, drawing and storytelling tasks to express difficult feelings and preserve meaningful memories/rituals from the home, and how these might be taken into/reimagined in new home environments. New caregivers no doubt have a critical role to play here and should be involved therapeutically where possible and safe to do so. Indeed, recent research has documented the complex challenges experienced by caregivers of children bereaved by suicide and IPH, indicating the need for targeted caregiver intervention and support (Alisic et al., 2025; Rinne-Wolf et al., 2025). For older children, the topic of home may serve as a useful framework for making sense of new relational dynamics and role shifts following the homicide (e.g., taking on carer responsibilities for siblings). Finally, practitioners could help bereaved persons of any age to reflect deeply on how their experiences have shaped their personal understanding of what home means and looks like for them, and what healing might be found in further transfiguration or committed action. Engagement in peer support may also be empowering in providing young people with authentic models of what this might look and feel like to inspire reflection and action on one’s own journey. These recommendations all critically depend on young people first being identified and having access to appropriate treatment. Poor access to care remains a significant problem internationally (e.g., Kaplan et al., 2001; Alisic et al., 2017a; Lewandowski et al., 2004). Formalised protocols and collaboration between the justice system, child protection, the education system, social services, and mental health care providers are needed to ensure that children are accounted for in all cases of IPH and routinely connected to well-resourced and specialised treatment across their development.

Strengths and Limitations

This study is the first, to our knowledge, to explicitly focus on experiences of home following parental IPH and more generally adds to the limited body of work exploring first-hand experiences of this form of traumatic loss. At a methodological level, such an approach honours participants’ agency, expertise, and rights to be heard in an arena where these voices are so often neglected, underprivileged, or obscured by paternalistic forces (Callaghan et al., 2017; Jaffe et al., 2015; Kenkel & Couling, 2006; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014; Sorbring & Kuczynski, 2018). Most participants in this study identified as female (17 of 22); this lacking diversity means our results may fail to adequately capture important aspects of this experience that are specific to, or complicated, in young boys and gender non-conforming persons. This study also lacked wider diversity in terms of other marginalised groups and ethnicities who are disproportionately affected by domestic violence and IPH, such as those in Queer relationships and Indigenous communities, where the destruction and dispossession of home continues at a macro level in the context of decolonisation and structural violence (Chatterjee, 2023; Cripps, 2023; Edwards et al., 2015; Messing et al., 2021). Finally, there was considerable variation in age in this study (16 to 52 years), such that most participants were adults reflecting on experiences that took place many years ago. The decision not to restrict participation to recently bereaved persons was made to increase the potential group of participants, and in recognition of the dearth of available research and potential for life-long consequences and sense-making following bereavement. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge that participants’ recall and understanding of their experiences are likely to have changed across the lifespan, and this should be held in mind when interpreting these findings.

Conclusion

Experiences of home are precarious and subject to significant disruption through acts such as IPH. Though violence and instability in the home can follow this experience, victim-survivors are active in responding to the many challenges this form of traumatic loss confronts them with. Our results demonstrate the importance of understanding home as both a physical and psychological space with great relevance for bereaved children. Experiences in these physical and psychological spaces need not be another source of suffering if services prioritize the safety and agency of children and young people while providing adequate support for their caregivers. Further work in this area, both qualitative and quantitative, should continue to interrogate post-homicide experiences of home to better support these individuals and their families. Future enquiry using longitudinal methods may be useful in producing a more fine-grained understanding of this experience across time to guide the development and timing of intervention delivery.