A new member of the website, an occupational physician has started a blogging site called ‘Insult & Injury’ www.workcoverobservertas.wordpress.com with a focus on the damage that can result to claimants from the claims management system. He has some very interesting thoughts. In particular he is a proponent of a uniform system throughout Australia (see my thoughts). He like most of us has seen claimants regarding claims in other states and it can be something of a nightmare navigating the system. This is especially so with regard to doing impairment assessments. I urge you to have a look at the site. It gives you a different perspective on the damage to claimants when you see comments on various websites. There are two websites that you might be interested in checking. The first called WorkCover Victims Diary is very much about how people have been done over. The second, based in New South Wales Injured Workers Support Network seems to me a little more evenhanded.It will do you good to see how much we can be hated!
Thanks for posting the link to “Insult & Injury”. I hadn’t seen Peter Sharman blog before. The other 2 websites I do look at.
Injured Workers Support Network, though clearly intended to be very political in its slant, I agree its articles/writings are more tempered and professional and not just incomprehensible rants. The site is aligned to the Union/Labor Party and many of it articles are just union press releases. I noticed its focus appears to have shifted away from being purely about workers compensation to content much more about general politics and promoting a pro-labor, anti-liberal party agenda.
WorkcoverVictimsDiary is certainly worth a read for no other reason than much of its content is quite batty.
It seems to be predominantly a meeting place for angry and outraged public and community sector workers who have had their workcover “bullying claims” (as they call them) denied or terminated, where they can come together and feed each others sense of injustice and victimhood, and whose posts often leave me scratching my head wondering are they really the bullied or the bully.
It’s a site where diagnosis are worn with pride and as a badge of honour and there is clearly a race or competition for the moniker of the “most injured”, something the blog owner seems to have declared to be firmly held by herself.
Little of its content is factually correct and unfortunately a lot of misinformation is given out, its a website where facts never get in the way of a good story and the spreading urban myths.
There is a very interesting dynamic on this WorkcoverVictimsDiary website. In the one corner you have the injured construction workers, tradies and various other private sector workers who seem to come to the website simply looking for general information on navigating the workcover system. In the other corner you have what can only described as the “professional victims” aka the public sector bullying claimants, pitch forks at the ready, and anyone that challenges them and their world view is very swiftly on the receiving end of a full scale attack and promptly barred from the website, branded a “workcover imposter” or “workcover troll” and banished when they are plainly nothing more than another injured worker with a differing point of view. It makes for very interesting reading nonetheless!
I have recently blogged about Injured Workers Support Sites. It is interesting to see the comments, which are quite polarised with the claim that the WorkCover Victim site can be selective about comments they post that the site moderator considers critical.
My view is that there is a role support sites, but it is important that they provide practical and correct information, not feed paranoia, but I am not sure how that is best achieved.
See the article and comments. http://wp.me/p3L4Uy-3S