Editorial: We need to do better for victims and their families

Brave families have spoken out about the impact of losing relatives at the hands of reckless drivers and we need to listen, writes the editor.

Thirty Queensland families a year deal with the grief of losing loved ones in car crashes caused by the drivers who flaunt the road rules.

For many, that grief turns to anger when they realise there is little or no support for them, unlike the victims of other types of crime.

Many states have introduced road trauma support services including South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. But not Queensland.

This week, brave families have spoken out about the impact of losing relatives at the hands of reckless drivers.

They cannot turn back time, but what they do say is that victims of deadly driving behaviour need help to cope.

South Australia, for instance, extends such support to families of crash victims of all types.

In Queensland, if a driver is charged with anything less than manslaughter or murder, or is not charged, those left behind have to deal with the ongoing consequences by themselves.

They are the ones facing a life sentence.

The pain, the loss of a vital breadwinner, the sudden end to the love of a mother or father killed on the road, is just the beginning of the challenges caused by these careless drivers.

The cost of professional counselling, medical bills for the injured and other expenses frequently run into the tens of thousands.

Remarkably, some families have gone on to drive changes that have rippled across the state.

Reforms such as minimum passing rules to protect cyclists were borne from the anguish of two Brisbane parents who lost their only child, for instance.

Dolly Evans. Her son Cohn Evans died a few years ago. She received no support and was disappointed. She wants to speak up so it doesn't happen to other families. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Helping others is how some of these extraordinary families have endured their pain.

While support is available to all victims of violent crime through Victim Assist, families say they were never told about it or the bureaucracy left them frustrated.

They deserve more specialised help, and it stands to reason they should be treated similarly to those who lose their loved ones in murder and manslaughter cases.

Simple but effective help could be modelled on New South Wales, where a road trauma support counsellor is in touch with a family within two days of a fatality.

This is something the former Labor government had a decade to introduce. Now, it is up to a new government to pick up the baton of reform.

Victim Support Minister Laura Gerber says she is working to set up an advocacy service.

Importantly, it will support families throughout the justice process, usually a prolonged ordeal taking months, even years, which inevitably retraumatises them.

This week’s state budget included nearly half a billion dollars, over five years, for victim support, including $10m a year for the new advocacy service.

This is a welcome step – but it cannot be overstated how important it is for there to be many more steps.

Questions over ED funding threat

It is reasonable to impose time limits on emergency departments. As the name suggests EDs are designed for emergencies, not long-term care.

But shuffling very sick people from one area to another just to meet a bureaucratic deadline does not seem, on the face of it, to be sensible policy.

As revealed today, ED staff have been ordered to turn over patients within 24 hours or a payment they receive for each patient may be cut.

Alarmed doctors and nurses say the “beat-the-clock” deadline endangers patients and encourages administrators to hide data.

Doctors say the target is arbitrary and worry that pressure to meet KPIs might lead to data manipulation.

Even worse, decisions might be rushed, purely to avoid funding penalties.

Queensland Health says the fears are unfounded. It says the longer someone stays in an emergency ward, the sicker they risk becoming.

That sounds like a fair point.

But there are roughly 12,000 ED stays longer than 24 hours per year, compared with about 400,000 public ED presentations.

It’s a drop in the ocean, begging the question of why this new rule is needed.

Originally published as Editorial: We need to do better for victims and their families