It was early on that winter's day, about 12.10am, when a 14-year-old boy driving a stolen car and fleeing from police struck her daughter, who was crossing the Civic bus interchange.

Clea Rose was a 21-year-old tourism management student who had two weeks earlier returned from exchange in Colorado. She died three weeks after being hit, having suffered a catastrophic brain injury.

Instead of retreating from the situation the teenager's crime forced her into, Ms Rose seized it with both hands, becoming an advocate for the rights of victims.

On Australia Day 2017, she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her work in that area, as well as in restorative justice, and police and law reform. She plans to use the platform to continue progressing victim's rights.

"I think for the majority of people, the justice process is disempowering," Ms Rose said.

She has urged the ACT government to "greatly enhance the rights of victims of crime" to access information about criminal cases that concern them. This includes matters such as court dates, or when an offender is released on bail. It also includes better access to conversations about matters such as the decision not to prosecute.

"When you're a victim, particularly of a serious crime … you're in a very difficult state," Ms Rose said. "If you get information about what's happening with the criminal, that's a whole burden taken off you.

"It frees you up to deal with the trauma, the grief, whatever else might be proving so difficult for you to manage. You're not wondering what is happening, you're not angry that you haven't been given information, and I know this happens, I know people are angry."

When her daughter died, Ms Rose and her husband campaigned for and eventually won change in police pursuits policy in the ACT.

But it did not stop there. Over the following decade Ms Rose and her husband Ross Dunn worked on changes opening up the process of restorative justice to young people charged with serious crimes. She said their case was the first time restorative justice - mediation aimed at rehabilitation by putting family and friends of both offender and victim in a room together - had applied to a young offender charged with something as serious as culpable driving causing death. Ms Rose said they also campaigned on the idea too much attention was given to the rights of offenders rather than victims, and there needed to be a better balance.

There was an "extraordinary healing" for the family that came from advocating for change. "I would like other victims of serious crimes to know that if they act for change, they'll probably find out, as we did, that helping others helps them to heal," she said.

Mr Dunn said his wife "richly deserves" a medal.

"Everyone but Frances realised what she was worth," he said. "What she was doing she considered fairly normal, but everyone she came up against was continually surprised about how purposeful and generous she was."

He described that work as reaching out to victims of crime, offering human contact in a time when people feel very isolated, often experiencing shock, horror, grief and anger.

"Many people think that after a certain time you should be over it," he said. "But the expectation of 'moving on' is often unrealistic. Some of the pain never goes away, so we learn to live with it."

Ms Rose's other work recognised as part of the honour included that with the ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner. For years, she was also a board member and volunteer with the National Brain Injury Foundation. She was a co-founder with Mr Dunn and her other daughter Zoe Rose for the Clea Rose Travel Award, which helps fund University of Canberra undergraduates to travel overseas.

"I'd never dreamt such a thing would happen," Ms Rose said of her award. "We just acted. We acted because our daughter had been killed."