ACC needs treatment

An editorial from the Marlborough Express

In the arthritic language of the police, "no offence has been disclosed" from their investigation into ACC's complaint that it was the victim of an extortion attempt from that bully, Bronwyn Pullar.
The public are entitled to conclude that it was ACC's own behaviour that was offensive, at least in the broader sense.
Ms Pullar is a former National Party activist who has been battling ACC over her own claim following a cycling accident. Amid this the corporation managed to send her sensitive information about 6500 people on its books.
Her wrongdoing, as ACC tells it, was then insisting that unless she received a guaranteed benefit for two years, she would hang on to this information and go public.
Ms Pullar denies she said any such thing and has since provided the media with a recording she made of her meeting with ACC officials. It supports her contention.
She did go public with the fact the files had been wrongly sent to her. But this was done three months later, having had no followup about the privacy breach.
ACC did not go to the police until the matter was humiliatingly public and credibility issues between the corporation and the complainant were to the fore. It smacks of having been a tactical counterpunch. A slow-motion one, which missed by a mile.
Still defending its own account as complete and accurate, ACC is left to adopt a less than convincing "trust us" stance.
It's all the harder to get away with this given the almost simultaneous release of another story reminding us of the lengths ACC has historically been prepared to go to, to prevail against problematic clients.
An Auckland man may receive up to 25 years' of ACC backpayments because he was refused compensation on the say-so of a doctor whom Judge Peter Trapski once formally described as a "hitman" called in to write reports staff needed to decline compensation. Such was the corporation's sour tradition of having tame doctors on hand to screw some people out of their rights.
The corporation doesn't seem to have learned a lot in the interim.
ACC is an imperfect system, but far better than any detectable alternative. It handles a great deal of public money and needs to do so carefully because it attracts its fair share of cheats, and then some.
Its wrongs are fixable. They need fixing. Its credibility has taken a hammering for reasons that have less to do with competence than with treating people honestly.

© 2012 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/opinion/7078399/Editorial-ACC-needs-treatment

Apology meaningless

An editorial from the Marlborough Express

There's an old saying that it's too late to be sorry. ACC needs to remember that.
Chief executive Ralph Stewart yesterday apologised for the latest gaffe by his staff and said they would be calling or writing to 6748 clients with an apology after their privacy was breached when a spreadsheet containing the names and details of at least 9000 claims was emailed to a client. This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened.
The corporation handles some of the most personally sensitive information of any government department and has said before that it does everything to ensure its processes are robust and secure.
Clearly they are not.
The most worrying aspect of the latest security breach, however, is that senior ACC managers were told about it in December. A staffer asked for the information back but did nothing more to follow through.
The client also sent alerts to more than 50 ACC managers raising concerns about the security of information held by the sensitive claims unit, which deals with cases including claims of rape and sexual assault. Details on 250 clients of that unit were included in the mailout.
But it wasn't until the client talked to a Fairfax journalist that ACC started taking the situation seriously.
A spokeswoman said they wished they had done more to investigate and Mr Stewart said the breach had been poorly handled. He has bought into the philosophy that there is no point defending the indefensible, but he's too late and the apology is meaningless without an explanation of how the internal processes were breached and why nothing was done sooner.
ACC Minister Judith Collins and Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff have asked Mr Stewart to provide an explanation, and these details should also be made public.
It is accepted that ACC deals with a huge number of cases each year, with claims involving contacts with multiple parties such as the claimant, the employer, medical organisations and care providers. Cases are handled by staff who are human and can add the wrong address to an outgoing email.
An organisation that operates in this environment will have appropriate checks and balances in place.
So it is a struggle to understand how a spreadsheet on 9000 claims can be attached to an email and find its way through that checking system to the wrong inbox.

© 2012 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/opinion/6571581/Editorial-Apology-meaningless

ACC backdown over counselling pleases

An article from the Marlborough Express by Penny Wardle

Blenheim counsellor Lizzie Fulton is delighted the Accident Compensation Corporation has backed down on its decision to make sexual abuse victims wait for a psychologist's assessment before starting counselling.
ACC announced yesterday that sexual abuse victims could immediately get up to 16 hours with a counsellor. This reversed guidelines released last year that focused treatment only on sexual abuse victims with a diagnosed mental injury.
Ms Fulton says it is possible ACC's change of heart might have more to do with a national shortage of psychologists to carry out the diagnosis than sympathy for sexual abuse victims.
She was certain that many victims disappeared off the radar while waiting for help. She had clients who were no longer contactable, having requested sexual abuse counselling last year. People who were not functioning well sometimes could not afford phones, she said. "People often take a long time to come forward asking for help, because their lives are in such a mess, she said. "Something in them says, `I can't continue like this'."
Email networks between ACC sexual abuse counsellors suggested it was not uncommon for people to wait up to six months for help. ACC had promised children would be fast-tracked, but Ms Fulton said there was a backlog of sexually abused children who had been waiting for three or four months for help.
For many sexual abuse victims, 16 counselling sessions would be enough, but she wanted to know what would happen for those who needed longer-term help. Some severely affected clients had required 50 or 60 sessions before they could live with the trauma of their abuse, she said.
"Abuse is the outcome of crime," said Ms Fulton. "There are people with mental health problems who might require a lifetime of treatment. If sexual abuse victims require long-term help, why should that not be available under ACC?"
The requirement for a mental health diagnosis to access treatment had discouraged victims from seeking help because of the stigma attached, she said. Some did not want to see a psychologist or psychologist.
The Marlborough Express understands that only one psychologist working part-time was available for this work in Marlborough.

© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd
http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/4016877/ACC-backdown-over-counselling-pleases

ACC changes 'hurt sex abuse victims'

An article from the Marlborough Express by Penny Wardle

ACC rule changes have shut down help for sexual abuse victims in Marlborough, say Blenheim counsellors.
Sexual abuse referrals have completely dried up for Bread of Life counsellor Lorraine Moffat, who until last October was seeing about 50 victims a year.
Blenheim counsellor Lizzie Fulton has seen her sexual abuse workload drop from about two inquiries a week to nil.
Ms Fulton said that without counselling, sexual abuse victims were likely to become more unwell and less able to cope with everyday life.
"ACC might be saving money but there will be a cost to the health system and employment and society in drinking, drugs and petty crime," she said.
Women's Refuge manager Rachel Black said that since the changes, the service had been supporting more women who had been sexually abused, but could not offer counselling because staff were not qualified.
Victims were referred to approved counsellors, who were paid using alternative government funding when possible, "but eventually we might have to dip into our own funds".
"I believe Government is trying to push funding for sexual abuse on to the community," said Mrs Black.
Ms Fulton said that since October, ACC-funded counselling required a professional psychologist or psychiatrist's diagnosis of mental injury, such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, directly caused by sexual abuse. Previously, counsellors had been able to make that call.
"The purpose seems to be to shift the blame from sexual abuse to something else in the person's life, such as family circumstances, then refuse counselling."
Referral now took months, when previously, sessions started straight away. "I heard yesterday that a woman who has been waiting seven months to hear whether she will get counselling has been told that she had been allocated 10 sessions with an unnamed counsellor who would contact her. Ten sessions is not enough. It takes four, even five sessions to develop a rapport and comfortable counselling environment."
Not only women, but also children who had found the courage to speak up about sexual abuse "will have to go on dealing with the pain and the extra shame that they have talked to someone but weren't important enough to get help", she said.
Maata Waka advocate Vonda Walker described ACC's new process as "unethical and extremely harmful to survivors of sexual violence, their families and the community". Depression, self-harm, anxiety, impaired memory and even suicide could be the result.
"Victims have often told their story many times to people like police officers and hospital staff," she said. The added layer of a psychologist or psychiatrist's assessment meant going through painful memories one more time.
ACC figures released last week show that since October last year, 90 per cent of people making ACC claims for sexual abuse counselling have either been refused cover or left waiting for a decision.
Cases approved for sexual abuse counselling by ACC were down from 472 in the first two months of last year to 32 in the same period this year.
As a result, ACC Minister Nick Smith announced that ACC-subsidised counselling rules would be reviewed by a four-person panel chaired by former mental health commissioner Dr Barbara Disley.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/3664370/ACC-changes-hurt-sex-abuse-victims