The Canberra mother who survived a horrific Hume road crash which killed her four-year-old son in July 2018 has urged the reinstatement of an on-scene trauma counselling service.
Camille Jago was a front seat passenger and her partner, Andrew Corney, was the driver of the family Ford Territory which was hit from behind by a truck while sitting stationary at a set of traffic lights on the Monaro Highway.
Their child Blake Corney, who was sitting in a child seat at the back of the car, died of catastrophic head injuries.
The traumatic circumstances of that incident has had a devastating effect not just for the family but for first responders, with every member of the police collision investigation team at the scene that day electing to move into other roles. The photographs taken in evidence were so horrific that they have been sealed.
In the wake of the coronial findings from that terrible crash, Australian Community Media launched a campaign seeking the ACT government to act promptly on mandatory truck safety technology.
Ms Jago appeared on Wednesday before the ACT Assembly committee inquiry into dangerous driving.
She said that while the family was given medium-term counselling and support during the coronial process, together with high quality support during the court process from ACT police, on-scene support for victims would have been very helpful.
"I felt what was missing was someone at the scene who is that trauma expert and I have since read through some of the other submissions and have noticed that that service used to be available and ended at the end of 2016," Ms Jago said.
"I would like to see that service come back.
"I realise that there is only a certain amount of funding that can go around but ... I understand that the funding for that went into the coronial counselling process and in my opinion both of those things need to be in place."
She said that there were some things that she thinks, as someone who was in the car, she would "have done differently if it a trauma support person had been at the scene."
She would also seek to have that same person at the hospital afterwards. She said she understood that the coronial service offered to victims was over-subscribed.
Supportlink's executive director Donna Evans, who also gave evidence to the committee on Wednesday, said that the service previously had offered that immediate on-scene support - ACT Trauma Service had been in place from 2006 to 2016 - because "shock and trauma can cripple people as to what to do next" and "victims need someone to help navigate their way through that". The service lost its funding in 2016.
Former ACT police sergeant Rick McQualter, who now works with Supportlink, said that as someone who well understands the police processes at a major car crash, having a trauma response person on the ground at the time was crucial.
The convicted driver in the Hume fatal collision, Akis Livas, only entered a plea of guilty very late in the process and he was not initially compliant with the police investigation.
Livas was found guilty of culpable driving causing death and sentenced to three years and three months in jail, a sentence which Andrew Corney described in the hearing as "manifestly inadequate". Livas is now out of jail.
A number of situations afterwards kept re-traumatising the family.
"As ordinary law-abiding citizens, for a police officer to come to our house and serve a subpoena; there's no empathy in that process and I found that difficult to stomach because we were the parents of the child that had died," she said.
"There was nothing that was going to stop me from being at that trial."
In his opening statement Mr Corney, told the committee that "the life of a victim is not easy".
"I want to reiterate to any decision-makers just how bad it can be," he said.
"For me on that fateful date, it is how a happy period in life can suddenly change," he said.
He described the experience of "how the world suddenly shifts around you and you just can't comprehend [what is happening]".
"When I came to [after the collision] a short while later, I saw the devastation of my son's injury," he said.
