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Road Trauma Support WA: Desperate funds plea for kids with road toll trauma to get support

Traumatised children affected by the carnage on our roads are being turned away from counselling because of a lack of specialist mental health practitioners at the agency set up to help them. The revelation has led to calls for more funding for the State’s free road-trauma counselling service that got just 0.869 per cent ($1.095 million) of the $126m money pot available last financial year. Road Trauma Support WA, the State’s counselling service for those impacted by road crashes, has referred almost 20 children to other services since January. The organisation picks up the pieces for distraught members of the community and is funded through the Road Trauma Trust Account — which gets its revenue from speed and red light camera fines before it is distributed by the Road Safety Commission. In 2023-24, the Road Trauma Trust Account’s coffers were boosted by $126m. In the current financial year the funding received by the organisation is understood to have barely increased to account for staffing changes, and not for the expansion of much-needed programs that could help children under 13. General manager at Road Trauma Support WA Ian Holbrook, a former police officer, said their case load had more than doubled over the past four years, with the organisation seeing 224 new clients in 2024. “The ultimate aim is to put me out of a job because if I didn’t need to exist, then that means no one’s having terrible events on the road,” he told The Sunday Times. “But unfortunately this year it’s gone the other way, and we’re seeing even more demand in the service than ever before.” Because Road Trauma Support doesn’t have specialised counsellors equipped to treat children under 13, they have been forced to refer 17 kids under that age to other organisations. Mr Holbrook said it was important to note that for some kids, counselling wasn’t always required. But he said there was still no dedicated service available for young people experiencing road trauma. “(For us to help them) it would require us to have a specialised room and employ someone specialised in that area, which we are very much open to doing,” he said. “Here’s the clincher, we’d need the funding to make it happen.” In total, $1.56m was distributed to post-crash response efforts last financial year while almost $30m was thrown at ensuring speed cameras were kept running. “Direct counselling to young people and children under 13 is an area of speciality at a time when we have shortages of skilled mental health professionals nationally,” Mr Holbrook continued. “Unfortunately, many people contact our service and require support that is outside the scope of what we can provide.” Mr Holbrook said providing information to families with kids under 13 and sharing support strategies with parents was one of the solutions they currently used to try to bridge this gap in support. In some circumstances, children were typically more resilient and counselling wasn’t always the most appropriate care option, he said. When major crash officers knock on the door of a family who has just lost a loved one in a crash, they hand out a brochure that includes the number for Road Trauma Support WA. Georgia Cipriano received one of those brochures when her 17-year-old son Levent died in a car crash in September. She has also called for the expansion of the Road Trauma Support service after it was unable to cater for her daughter, Allegra, who just turned nine. “They offered to counsel me, (and gave me advice on how) to counsel her when you’re trying to deal with the loss of your child, it’s impossible,” she said. “We ended up getting her into a private psychologist who is a family friend, and that’s how they got her in so quickly, but then that was costing us $200 a week. “She is petrified of me dying now. I can’t even shower without her thinking I’m gonna die, so she’ll sit on my bed while I’m in the shower. “She isn’t the only child that’s lost a sibling in a car accident.” It is understood there is no age cut-off for support in the homicide trauma program recommended to families by WA Police. This year’s road toll of 181 — the worst since 2016 — does not reflect all the carnage on WA roads considering it doesn’t include non-fatal crashes and vehicular suicides that have left loved ones and other motorists traumatised. Mr Holbrook said horrific cases that land on his desk prove that the ripple effects of road trauma were more complex and far-reaching than people realised. “A truck driver I spoke to some time ago had someone commit vehicular suicide upon his truck,” he said. “He was having nightmares, -difficulty sleeping, intrusive thoughts during the day, feeling quite depressed and wondering how, for him, the impact of that was going to play out as a driver getting back to work. “Just having those two or three chats with him over the next four to six weeks, I was able to give him an understanding of what that looks like.” In another case, Mr Holbrook said he met with an off-duty junior nurse who had come across the scene of a serious motorcycle crash near her home. “When she’s wearing her uniform and in hospital, there’s an expectation you’re going to see and come across people injured,” he said. “But sitting in your own front lounge room, hearing this almighty bang and rushing out to a scene of catastrophe was something that person was not prepared for. “Then there are people who are involved in fatalities as the culpable party, who have killed their own family members, and that’s something they’re going to live with for the rest of their life. “There isn’t an end point to that trauma.” Mr Holbrook said some people had even contacted their service 10 to 15 years after a crash. “(A crash victim) has a partner, they may have children, friends, relatives, brothers, sisters and (be) a member of a cricket club,” he said. “Then there was (say) four people that saw it happen, somebody tried to give them mouth-to-mouth, and then the police officer was traumatised by it. “It’s one of those things where you don’t really want to know about it until you have to.” Almost 1000 people have been seen by the Road Trauma Support WA team since 2020. Its team members are continually travelling throughout WA to better equip the regions — who have the highest crash rate on average — with information. A Road Safety Commission spokesman said a review into current and future funding arrangements with Injury Matters — the parent company of Road Trauma Support — was under way. “Every dollar that is collected from speed and red-light cameras goes into the Road Trauma Trust Account and has to be spent on road safety,” Road Safety Commissioner Adrian Warner said. “Bringing the road toll down is a complex task. It requires the pulling of multiple levers and this is reflected in how the RTTA is invested.” Road Trauma Support WA: 1300 004 814 Lifeline: 13 11 14

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Road Trauma Support WA: Desperate funds plea for kids with road toll trauma to get support