Intermediary Panel of Qualified Communication Specialists

Brief

The Department of Justice (DoJ), in response to recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, established an intermediary scheme in Queensland to support children under 16 years and adults with an impairment of the mind or communication difficulty who are the complainants of, or witnesses to, child sexual offences. The Queensland Intermediary Scheme (QIS) does this by providing intermediaries to assess the witness and make recommendations to police and the courts about how to communicate with them to obtain their best evidence. An intermediary’s role is to facilitate communication between the witness and police during a police investigation and/or the witness and courts during criminal proceedings. Intermediaries are not expert witnesses, advocates, support persons or language interpreters, but are independent officers of the court. The QIS is facilitated by provisions in the Evidence Act 1977 (the Act), the Evidence Regulation 2017 (Regulation) and Practice Direction No 7 of 2021 and primarily operates in the Brisbane and Cairns regions. The scheme is currently legislated to operate in in two locations - Brisbane and Cairns - however in some instances, intermediaries might be engaged to assist in other geographical locations or for other offence types – for example sexual offences committed against adults; serious domestic and family violence matters and other serious violent offences.