Dr Smith continues to defend the indefensible

A blog entry from Red Alert by David Parker

Dr Smith may be good at obfuscating, but its not an admirable skill. This week he claimed the figures used by Phil Goff at question time to highlight the drastic reduction in (mainly) women accessing counselling following sexual crimes were incorrect. They were Dr Smith’s own figures, in answers to parliamentary questions. Phil rounded the historic monthly ACC approvals for October 2008 down from 312 to 300 and contrasted it to the patently unjustifiable 6 approvals in February 2010. Only to the extend of the rounding to 300 – which was to the advantage of the government! - were the figures ‘incorrect’, as Dr Smith stated.

Read the rest of this entry at http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/04/29/dr-smith-continues-to-defend-the-indefensible/

ACC and sexual abuse victims

A blog entry from Red Alert by Grant Robertson

Last night I hosted a public meeting on changes to ACC. One of the speakers was Eric Medcalf from the NZ Association of Psychotherapists. He gave an impassioned speech that showed how the changes are not only contrary to the principles of ACC but also risk re-victimising survivors of sexual abuse. The changes include requiring a full psychiatric diagnosis of mental illness and reducing treatment hours. As Eric said:
When ACC insist that all new claimants must have a full psychiatric assessment and a diagnosis of mental illness they are raising the bar to help for many thousands of people, women, children and men, who have suffered sexual abuse as children, or been sexually assaulted as adults. They are saying “prove to us you are mentally ill before we will give you any help”. This is insulting to victims of sex crimes.
If you want to read the full text of Eric’s speech, here it is.

http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2009/12/01/acc-and-sexual-abuse-victims/