ACC: Proof always required

ACC says clients have always been required to prove a significant mental injury arising from sexual abuse.

It says there is no limit on the amount of counselling clients can get but checks are required during treatment to see if counselling is helping, and whether any changes should be made to the treatment.

If it is demonstrated more counselling would help, then it can be considered.

The corporation was responding to Taranaki Daily News questions concerning the case of a Taranaki grandmother, whose grandsons have been sexually abused.

A spokesman for ACC Minister Nick Smith said the issue was a clinical matter.

"The minister has no more intention of intervening over eligibility than he does in other areas of medical treatment".

He added that the origins of the new guidelines go back to 2004, when concerns were raised about the effectiveness of sexual abuse counselling.

"That resulted in an $800,000 comprehensive research programme by Massey University, which led to the new guidelines being produced last year. There has been extensive consultation on those guidelines," the spokesman said.

But Labour's victims rights spokeswoman Lynne Pillay says the changes are clearly designed to cut costs and "they have the minister's hands all over them".

The harsh criteria was re-victimising the vulnerable victims of sexual abuse who did not have a voice.

"Every therapist and counsellor in the country is up in arms about this."

In Nelson they were refusing to work under the proposed process, she says.

"It's clear cost cutting. I don't accept that the minister isn't involved. I think the minister's hands are all over it."

In the past many sexual abuse victims had taken advantage of ACC-funded counselling and been able to move on with their lives, she said.

"If it's not broken why fix it," she asked.

Before December there were only four people waiting for ACC approval in the Auckland region alone. There were now 103, she said.

"There is a pattern of ACC moving the goalposts and making it more and more difficult for people and children to access the counselling support that they need. It is cynical cost cutting. The psychotherapists and counsellors are the experts and they haven't even been consulted."

Counsellors were taking a reasonable approach and asking for proper discussion before the controversial guidelines were implemented, Ms Pillay said.

ACC's letter to the grandmother, dated September 15, declining cover, states they "found no clinically significant mental injury arising from the events described".

An ACC psychologist believes one of the boy's mood swings, tearfulness and sitting alone sucking his thumb could be due to settling into school and a new environment rather than the sexual abuse events. "The best practice may be not to treat this child for sexual abuse unless further problems which were clearly related to the abuse later became evident," the letter says.

However, ACC has offered to arrange an assessment by an independent child psychiatrist "to clarify whether there was a mental injury" if the grandmother thought treatment was required, the letter adds.

Rape Crisis spokeswoman, Dr Kim McGregor, of Auckland, said the little boys' alleged abuse was not the worst she had heard.

She had gathered 20 pages of rejected sexual abuse claims from across the country. "There are many, many such situations. Of all the sexual abuse cases we have seen in the last nine months, 67 per cent have either been delayed or declined."

ACC was rejecting or delaying acceptance of similar sexual abuse cases across the country since it toughened up criteria well ahead of the October 26 deadline when it intends implementing even tougher "clinical pathways," she said.

- © Fairfax NZ News