If the Question Can Be Asked, the Answer Can Be Established

How big is the injured worker community, who actually makes up the injured worker community, what real information do we have about the injured worker community?

How many degrees out from a workplace injury does the injured worker community actually go?

At what point do we stop focussing on the “impact” of the workplace injury and start to interact with the person/people?
It seems odd that whilst an injury is what triggers a workers compensation claim, the scheme proper doesn’t interact with the “point of impact” the scheme proper interacts with the whole person.
It also seems odd that the scheme proper only interacts with a single person without understanding that the “person” is  also connected to and forms part of a family and a workplace family and also a wider community.

It is no longer acceptable to simply say we don’t know because we have no way to measure the injured worker community or the ripples that emanate in every conceivable direction and then bounce off of obstacles into different directions only to repeat the process over and over again.

We simply do not know the impact of a worker’s compensation claim on every aspect of a person’s life.  We don’t know how many women have decided or have had the decision made for them not to have children due to a workplace injury. The injury may not be to them directly, the injury may be to their partner or even a sibling. The decision to not have a child though is just one of the ripples that have not been investigated.
The same decision can have been made by a man, to not father a child or be unable to father a child.

We do not know how many children -second or third degrees out from a workplace injury have been financially, emotionally, educationally impacted by a workplace injury to a parent or even a grandparent. 

We do not know the impact of a workplace injury on members of the workplace family, this includes the employer- not just the financial impost, but the emotional and psychological wellness of the workplace family.  We don’t know about the guilt of not preventing a workplace injury or the relief of the workplace injury happening “to someone else”

In short, we simply do not know what we do not know and that needs to change.
There are many reasons it needs to change, but the main drivers are the immediate and understandable reasons.

A workplace injury happens to a person who then in turn reverts to relying/needing the care and support of family members for a raft of things.
Thirty years back the task of “caring” would have fallen to the matriarch of the family unit.
Now the matriarch is also in the workforce and may not be able to take time to tend to the needs of the injured family member.
This can set in place another series of ripples that impact emotionally on the person with the workplace injury and the matriarch for not being able to fill the role of care provider- this is something that once more has never been measured.

Hence a person needs then go to the scheme proper to provide such mundane things as transport or home care- only the scheme is loath to be involved at this level for extended periods of time.

And so, we come back to the size of the injured worker community, and the complexity of just who makes up the community and who is impacted directly and indirectly by a workplace injury.

How do we start to measure, what is the framework required to place such measurements in and what if anything will be gained by the knowing of the information?

What are the crosshair moments to sidestep and what is “none of the workers compensation industry business” What is the financial entanglements for all concerned? At what point do we say the tape measure won’t go that far or at what point do we say there is no indication of a ripple reaching this far? Can the impact be seen on the cash register docket from a supermarket? Is the missing school community member from a working bee an indication of impact? Is an extra litre of milk at the end of a week for a coffee shop a measure that needs to be considered as part of the impact of a workplace injury? Does the barista fill the role of a 3^rd degree ripple impacted by a workplace injury- is the loss of a regular single sale of a take away coffee also a part of the impact? Is the coffee shop/deli owner a 3^rd or 4^th degree within the outer reaches of the injured worker community?
Is a child failing at school due to lack of sleep or poor nutrition or parental support due to a workplace injury then also entwine the class teacher/school into the outer reaches of the injured worker community?

Right now I know that the injured worker community is akin to the depths of the vast oceans, we know it is there, we simply have no real working knowledge of the impact a workers compensation claim has, we do not know that complexity of each ripple as it starts out only to bounce and ricochet in any and every direction.

What I do know is that if it is possible to form a question regardless of the complexity or simplicity of the question, the answer/answers are also reachable.
It is not the answer/s that in the first instance that is important, it is the will and the want to understand just what this concept called the injured worker community actually is and then work from there. 

Yours in service,
Rosemary

www.craigstable.net.au
rosemary@craigstable.net.au
SKYPE Rosemary2412
19^th October 2019