How to use an impact statement to support a Redress Scheme application

If you are applying to the National Redress Scheme, there is a part of the application that asks how the abuse affected your life. Not what happened. How it shaped the years that followed.

That part matters more than many people realise, and it is the part this guide is about.

This page describes applying for redress after institutional child sexual abuse. It is written plainly and without detail of abuse itself, but the subject alone may be hard to sit with. Please go at your own pace, and there are support numbers at the end.

What redress is, briefly

The National Redress Scheme was set up after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It is for people who experienced child sexual abuse in an institution, such as a school, church, home, foster placement, sports club or youth detention.

An offer of redress can include three things, and you can accept or decline each one:

• a payment, ranging from under $10,000 up to a maximum of $150,000
• access to counselling and psychological care
• a direct personal response from the institution, if you want one, such as an apology or acknowledgement

It is not a court case. No judge, no sentencing, no offender in a dock. The bar is lower too. Redress is assessed on "reasonable likelihood," which is an easier standard than a court's "balance of probabilities." You do not need police reports, medical records or court documents to apply, though you can include them if you have them.

Where your impact statement fits

The application has two different parts that ask about your experience, and it helps to see them as separate jobs.

Part 2 asks what happened, in your own words. This is the account of the abuse itself.

Part 3 asks about the impact. It gives you space to describe the effect the abuse has had across your life. This is where an impact statement belongs.

Keeping these separate is not only tidy, it is kinder. You do not need to relive the abuse in detail to write a strong impact section. The hardest account lives in Part 2. Part 3 is about the life that came afterward, which for many people is easier to write and closer to what they actually want understood.

Here is the part worth holding onto. Your description of the impact is one of the things the independent decision maker considers. Recognition of the impact of the abuse is a recognised component of how redress is worked out, alongside the nature of the abuse itself. So the impact section is not a formality tacked to the end. It is assessed.

Two honest words about that. Writing it well does not mean writing it big, and no words can guarantee a particular amount, because the Scheme measures every application against its own framework. What careful writing does is make sure the impact is fully seen rather than undersold. Many survivors instinctively minimise, and on this form, a life described too lightly is a life the decision maker cannot fully weigh.

Using the ten sections for your impact section

Justice Draft's free tool walks you through ten sections, one question at a time. They were built for victim impact statements, and most of them map directly onto the impact-across-your-life question in a redress application. Treat them as a checklist. Some will fit you and some will not, and blank sections are completely fine. Their value is that they stop a whole area of impact from being forgotten.

For a redress impact section, these tend to carry the most:

• Emotional wellbeing. The mental health effects across your life. Diagnoses, treatment, the patterns you have lived with, in your own words.
• Relationships. How the abuse shaped trust, closeness, family, friendships and parenting over the years.
• Physical health. Any lasting physical effects, including the physical toll of long-term stress.
• Financial impact. This one is easy to overlook and often enormous. Schooling cut short, work you could not sustain, a lifetime of lost earning capacity. The impact of childhood abuse is frequently financial, decades long, and worth writing down.
• Daily life and routine. How the abuse has shown up in ordinary days, for years.
• Sense of safety. What safety has felt like, or not felt like, since.
• Spiritual and cultural wellbeing. For abuse in a religious or cultural institution especially, disconnection from faith, community or culture can be one of the deepest harms.

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The second place your statement helps

If you ask for a direct personal response, your impact statement can be used again, and this time on your terms.

A direct personal response is survivor led. It is a chance to have your experience heard and acknowledged by a senior person from the institution. It can be a face-to-face meeting, a written letter, or whatever method suits you and the institution agrees to. Some people read their statement aloud. Others send it in writing and never meet anyone. Both are valid, and you decide.

On the application, Part 3 also asks whether you agree to share your impact information with the institution responsible. That is your choice too. If you do, the words you have already written can become the basis of what the institution hears and responds to. Written once, they can carry your voice into the acknowledgement you are owed.

How this differs from a court statement

If you have written, or imagined writing, a victim impact statement for a criminal court, redress is gentler in several ways worth knowing.

There is no offender present, and no cross-examination. The process is private and mostly on paper. The standard of proof is lower. And you are not writing to influence a sentence, because there is no sentence. You are writing so that the harm is recognised, the institution is held to account, and you receive what acknowledges it. The purpose is recognition, not punishment.

Practical things to know

You do not have to do any of this alone, and you should not have to. Free Redress Support Services can help you complete the application, sit with you through the hard parts, and speak to the Scheme on your behalf. knowmore is a free, independent legal service for people applying for redress, and free legal advice matters at one point in particular: accepting a redress payment involves signing a deed that releases the institution from further claims for the abuse. Before you accept or decline any offer, talk to knowmore.

A few other facts to hold:

• Applications can take twelve months or longer to decide. Slow is normal, and does not mean doubted.
• A redress payment does not count as income for pensions and other Commonwealth payments.
• You can apply by post or online through myGov, and support services can help with either.

Take your time, and watch one date

Writing an impact section is not a one-sitting task. People write a little, step away, and come back. That is a completely normal way to write about the hardest thing that happened to you, and the statement is better for the care.

But there is one hard deadline you cannot move. The National Redress Scheme closes to new applications on 30 June 2027. Preparing the impact section can be slow and gentle. Lodging cannot be left too late. If you are even considering applying, start the conversation with a support service well before that date.

A gentler way to write it

Justice Draft's free tool guides you through the ten sections one question at a time, at your own pace, saving as you go. Write your answers, download your draft, and use it for the impact section of your application, and later for a direct personal response if you choose one.