I have received the following communique originated by NZ Association of Psychotherapists member Kyle MacDonald; an easy means for you to tell the Minister for ACC what you think about sexual abuse recovery rationing:
Grass Roots Political Action, a step by step recipe.
“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.â€
— Robert M. Hutchins
- Time required: 10 minutes.
- Ingredients: Four pieces of A4 paper. Two envelopes.
- Method: go to Kyle’s website www.psychotherapy.org.nz and click “Grass Roots Political Action: A step by step recipe”.
- Select which Minister, and print one out for Pansy and one for Nick.
- Read the letter; react and critique.
- Insert your details into the angle-brackets. Change the wording to your heart’s content; the more varied the letters the better!
- Print, and sign.
- All mail to Parliament is free, so simply pop in an envelope!
- Bask in the glow of flexing the democratic freedom you are lucky enough to possess, and pass both the word, and this email, on to everyone who you can possibly think of…
Update: There’s also a petition, for what that’s worth.
Grass Roots Political Action Part II – Gather Support.
“In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its
value is not in its taste, but in its effects.”
— J. William Fulbright.
Dear friends, colleagues and supporters of counseling and therapy in
Aotearoa New Zealand,
Many of you will now be aware of attempts by ACC to change the Sensitive
Claims Scheme which provides counseling to victims of sexual assault and
abuse. These changes are being rushed through with inadequate consultation
and the professional organizations representing the providers of this
treatment have been lobbying parliament to stop the changes.
Now there is something you can do to help! Follow this link to an online
petition and sign up to show your opposition to the proposed changes.
http://www.petitiononline.com/ACC0909/petition.html
Please also circulate this petition as widely as you can to friends, family,
colleagues, clients and your professional networks. The aim will be to
present this to The Minister for ACC Hon. Nick Smith prior to the 12th of
October.
Thank you for your time,
Kyle MacDonald
Psychotherapist
There. Easy.
L
Hi Lew – I’ve been trying to read up on this. Can you source “16 hours maximum” for me? I can’t find any source for it earlier than your 24 August post. The Massey guidelines are based on findings that up to 16 hours is fine for many people, but make very clear that some clients will require more than this. (e.g. p82)
Cheers
Morgan
Morgan,
I’m not sure if the policy has been publicly released by ACC, but the presentation given by SCU clinical director Peter Jansen to ACC sexual abuse practitioners is here (as released by Kyle MacDonald). It’s in horrible PowerPoint format, and slide 22 shows what happens at session 16. I understand that this has been repeatedly confirmed by clinicians in discussion with SCU management.
Note that the NZAP’s objection isn’t that nobody will receive a 17th section — it’s that the therapeutic process will be interrupted, probably halted and replaced with a different treatment process (if it does continue) at this arbitrary point regardless of how therapy is progressing. I’m not a clinician (far from it) and can’t go into the details of why this is relevant, but if you have further questions I’d suggest you direct them to Dr Gudrun Frerichs, an NZAP member who was involved in writing the open letter.
L