We understand how important it is for families and friends of direct survivors of abuse to have good personal supports around them. Many studies show that secondary survivors have a large influence on how the primary survivor heals from the assault.

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To assist in supporting our clients:

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• Survivors referred to Carelink are encouraged to be accompanied by a support person through the following: initial meeting with Carelink (to introduce our services, engaging with a psychiatrist for the purposes of the assessment, attendance at the compensation panel and any appointments thereafter.

• In support of this we offer to fund an accompanying support person of their choosing to facilitate any of the above by way of travel and accommodation for them.

• Clients of Carelink are usually accompanied by a trusted friend of family member. In the absence of this (or in addition to), they may be accompanied by a legal representative, psychologist, GP or other professional support. 

• Carelink proactively ask our clients who is involved in their lives to provide support of both a personal and professional nature and how we may best facilitate their involvement.

• With particular reference to attending at the psychiatric assessment and compensation panel, we highly recommend that a support person is in attendance. In our experience, this is often where clients feel quite distressed before and afterwards so having a trusted and known person as accompaniment is helpful.

• The support person acts in a manner of ways dependent on the situation: confidante, advocate, spectator as an example.

• Some clients request that their support person be kept informed of any correspondence, meeting requests etc. This is very individual.

• Some secondary survivors accompany our client to our drop in morning tea.

• Post covid we are hosting a specific morning tea just for secondaries.

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To assist in supporting secondary survivors (family and friends), we offer the following:

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