Psychological injury often rises from repeat exposure over months or years, so you've got to look at it in the cumulative pattern.

I've seen some interesting things lately, like sort of in our environment, where in the past, maybe it might be a psych assessment.

That's how you can tell if there has been VT trauma.

But now we're seeing a bit of a different landscape in like the TPD space, where after someone has passed away, we're getting requests to see what the causation was in their prior role to them drinking and stuff.

Was it the work that caused it in a high, um, trauma environment, or was it really, or did they pass away from the PTSD, the depression, or from the alcohol, and when was there the crossover? It's a whole different, um, basket of claims-

Yeah, yeah.

And I know when I have worked in other environments and stuff, they would peer- pair us up, and we would, you know, 10 minutes or 15 minutes, um, when I worked a lot of frontline work and stuff as well, and I think that was really good, 'cause then you hear how someone else interprets it.

Maybe we could interpret this story or whatever different, and I think that's a good takeaway in our healing from working with people in frontline and responders and being exposed to trauma on a daily basis.

So Vanessa, talk us through your role because it's broader than most people would think.

It is, definitely.

So I'm the National Customer and Legal Manager and I sit at the intersection of the legal sector and customer experience, working with the legal sector and lots of our referrers to help them make the match with the right specialist, see if there's ways I can help them, just provide general guidance and solutions to what they're experiencing as well too.

And you know, make the process a bit easier.

I have a lovely team that sit behind me as well too and help us.

So yeah, we're really lucky.

How do you manage that in terms of your people?

We have an open door policy and stuff with our staff that they can come in anytime and speak with us.

Vanessa Daniel, tell us about your role.

Um, thank you, Damien.

Thank you for having us.

I'm the national customer and legal manager at MLCOA, and I work with the concierge team, manage the concierge team, and we just simplify the medico-legal process, so people can reach out to us, and we can assist them with any of their needs.

... isn't it, about-

Yeah, for the employers to check in with the people as well too, 'cause how many people are at home and no one's calling them after an event in the workplace as well too?

But Vanessa, over to you.

Thanks, Damien.

I'm the national legal manager for MLCOA, and I manage the concierge team, and that's just a process to help referrers simplify medico-legal reports and requests just by getting the requester come into us and, um, seeing what your needs are, how we can best align specialists to, um, the conditions that your claim might have, and just like an end-to-end process.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, and, uh, and they can also come in with a support animal and stuff 'cause it is quite traumatizing, I guess, coming back to MLCOA or going back to tell your story again, um, can bring up lots of things, I think, for people.

So, you know, there's a way around it, and-

[laughs]

We know from the psychiatric injury data, which is more my thing than Andrew in terms of he's a workplace, I've been a sort of a compensation lawyer.

We know that the longer you spend off work, the more entrenched, um, the adversarial view becomes, the more heightened it...

And that's why in say s- in, in co- in compensation sche- schemes, they navigate two sort of extremes.

One is about trying to have early intervention to get people back to work, but also to test the reasonable parameters 'cause people respo- you know, 'cause there's sort of a culpability test in psychiatric.

But it's a really fascinating dilemma.

On your point, Vanessa, the longer people stay off work, the, the more problematic it i- it- Yeah And especially if no one's reaching out to them or making contact or, you know, what can we do? Is there somebody checking in, um, even as an employer's responsibility instead of just letting it go to a medical-legal.

It's sort of positional, I guess, rather than adversarial, and not really-- They aren't collaborating r- really in a genuine way.