Review of ACC sexual-abuse claims

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Some sexual-abuse victims have cost the ACC nearly $500,000 each over the past five years, figures released under the Official Information Act show.

Figures for the past five years show the five longest counselling arrangements funded by the ACC's sensitive claims unit (SCU) have lasted between 12 and 14 years.

The top five claimants in money terms in the past five years have cost between $445,000 and $495,000 each.

Overall, SCU clients cost taxpayers nearly $58m in the year to last June 30, compared with $48.5m in the previous year.

The costliest part of the compensation was payment of independence allowances ($22.2m), followed by weekly compensation ($15.1m) and counselling ($14.4m). The amounts exclude GST.

The number of new claims accepted dropped from 3944 to 3245.

The ACC is radically changing the way sensitive claims are processed. From the latter part of last year, the SCU required claimants to have a proper diagnosis that they have a mental injury caused by sexual abuse.

In October it began a "clinical pathway" that reassesses clients after 16 counselling sessions.

ACC Minister Nick Smith has asked for an April review of the new system, which has been criticised by counsellors and psychotherapists.

The ACC says the clinical pathway regime, which is based on Massey University research, embodies best practice.

The 2008 research project found 16 sessions was the optimum number for most adults requiring counselling as a result of mental injuries caused by sexual assault. It pointed to the importance of counselling being "short-term, focused and directional".

The figures show counsellors billed the ACC $14.4 million in the 2008-09 financial year, about the same as in the two previous years.

ACC director of operations Graham Bashford, who joined the corporation from an Australian welfare agency 15 months ago, said the ACC had not set a target for the reduction of sensitive claims, and the clinical pathway guidelines did not limit the number of counselling sessions.

He had asked for a more rigorous application of the legal requirement that claimants had a firm diagnosis showing a mental injury caused by sexual abuse.

"I personally have asked for a better application of the law in the case of sensitive claims because they [staff] are responsible to me, and when I arrived they were not applying the law as appropriately as they should have done," he said.

Since October, the ACC had had 152 referrals, of which it had accepted nine, declined 12 and had put 131 on hold while further information was sought.

Some clients would need years of counselling, but the Massey guidelines said "it's not the right thing but possibly a bad thing because it allows the client to become reliant on the counselling and they don't get back on the horse".

"If there is no improvement, we need to adopt some other form of rehabilitation, and that is the whole idea of the assessment," Bashford said.

The corporation has about 840 accredited counsellors. Psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald, who last year organised a petition against the new guidelines for the Association of Psychotherapists, said the patients in counselling for 12 to 14 years had suffered extreme childhood sexual abuse.

It was reasonable for those patients to need weekly counselling for a long period, even the rest of their lives, he said.

The ACC was increasingly declining claims associated with childhood sexual abuse, he said.

ACC seemed to be simplifying "to the point of redundancy" what they were going to fund, MacDonald said.

- © Fairfax NZ News