Counselling delay is intolerable

IT is appalling that victims of sexual abuse are waiting up to two years before receiving full-time counselling support from a State scheme set up to help people recover after their traumatic experience.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) has to explain why more than 11,000 people are waiting for treatment after being referred to the government’s National Counselling Service for adults who experienced abuse in childhood.

A community-based service, it was set up six years ago this month to provide counselling for adults abused in institutions and operates under the HSE umbrella. Since then, its scope has been broadened to include people abused in other settings.

Because of the lack of funding for counselling services, victims of sexual assault are turning to anti-depressants or end up in psychiatric hospitals.

Nor will the backlog be eased by today’s announcement of €9 million for voluntary support groups, ranging from marriage breakdown to bereavement counselling.

Only last week, the coalition’s handling of the growing crisis of sexual violence in Irish society was criticised in these columns.

Health Minister Mary Harney was accused of failing rape victims as funding shortfalls were highlighted by a dramatic increase in sexual assaults.

Any lingering doubts about the scale of on-going abuse were dispelled by a report from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre showing it received a record 16,331 calls last year — 2,000 more than the previous 12 months. Alarmingly, some 46% of the calls involved sexual abuse of children.

Despite the inexorable rise in assaults, Ireland has only four centres where victims can be forensically examined — in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Letterkenny.

Because of the government’s niggardly approach to this essential service, a disgraceful scenario emerged last weekend when a woman who had been assaulted in Tralee had to go to Waterford for forensic examination. She had to make the traumatic journey, without either washing or changing her clothes, simply because no one was available to examine her in Cork, the nearest available unit.

Against this depressing backdrop, the delay in providing counselling for victims of sexual assault is intolerable.

Overall, the true scale of the situation is somewhat clouded because while people are able to get an initial appointment for counselling relatively quickly — somewhere between four to eight weeks — it can take anything up to two years for them to be allocated for therapy.

With the customary obfuscation of officialdom, the HSE would only confirm an 11-month average delay for people waiting to be allocated to the service, depending on where they live.

However, the HSE would not disclose the longest waiting time for full-time counselling nor give the reasons for the continuing delay. In emergency cases, victims are fast-tracked for priority treatment.

By any standard, the counselling delay is unacceptable. According to experts working at the coal-face of Ireland’s worsening crisis of sexual assault, the recovery powers of counselling are clearly seen when the trauma is faced with openness and without undue delay.

It is indeed a cause of serious concern, as stated by Deirdre Fitzpatrick of One in Four, a voluntary group which supports victims of abuse, that so many people have to wait so long before they receive counselling.

The risk is that victims who feel they are being consigned to a seemingly never-ending queue for counselling which they so urgently need will inevitably turn their backs on a State-run system which is mired in delay, and thus become increasingly reliant on anti-depressant drugs or end up in psychiatric hospitals.

That is an appalling vista.