Helping the ACC afflicted
The sign atop a small window on the corner of 122 Esk St, advertising the presence of the Southland ACC Advocacy Trust, is pretty amateurish. What happens inside isn’t. The office, upstairs of Grey Power, is pokey, a bit cluttered and unprepossessing. A place where any intrusive cats would remain unswung, where you might notice a stray biscuit between two sheets of paper and where there sits, on a shelf by advocate Barry Rait’s desk, a can of baking soda. A gift from a client, Rait explains. Useful stuff it is too. For all sorts of things. Potentially. Nearby – and everything in here is nearby everything else – sits Lesley Soper, a former Labour List MP, current city councillor and, as an overhead certificate attests, a newlycapped lawyer with a special interest in ACC law. She can reach over to access tea and sugar, similarly donated as tokens of thanks. They do okay for cakes, too. Rait scored a knitted scarf. And, that one time, mushrooms. ‘‘Ordinary Southland mushrooms,’’ Soper adds, since we saw fit to seek clarification. The trust strives to correct the imbalances that arise when people assailed by difficulties with the ACC process need help but cannot afford the attentions of a lawyer. Which, at least as a specialising dedicated service, makes it is a huge rarity, if not unique, in New Zealand. Here we might pause to stop condescending to this resolutely unflash outfit.The trust represents roughly 50 people in ACC in review process and can claim a 60 to 65 per cent success rate in persuading the independent review company, FairWay, to quash decisions. The nationwide figure for wins on review is about 18 per cent, Rait says. And that success rate doesn’t take in are the people whose cases that have been able to be sorted out without needing to go, formally, to review. Not that the review process should be portrayed as too terribly intimidating in itself, Rait says. ‘‘It’s inquisitorial, not adversarial,’’ The level of service the trust offers ranges from full advocacy, to offering advice or guidance on how people might manage their own cases, or showing up supportively at meetings. The service includes issues of ACC cover and entitlements, advice on initial medical and vocational assessments, individual rehabilitation plans, vocational independence and assessments, and preparing for and helping at reviews or mediations. Set up 14 years ago by former Labour Invercargill MP Mark Peck’s staffer John Watson upon Peck’s exit from national politics, the trust gets by on an annual budget between $40,000 and $50,000, some of it official recompense, but crucially with the supported by the ILT Foundation, the Community Organisations Grants Scheme and, until a few years ago, the Community Trust of Southland. When Watson moved away Rait, who had been chairman for a couple of years, took on an advocacy role. It went swimmingly – which is to say he only came close to drowning in the workload until Marion Troon came on board to help and then, for the past four years, Soper stepped forward. Neither Rait nor Soper is inclined to criticise the fairdealing decency of individual ACC representatives, much and all as there are some systemic issues and practices that bring them no joy. Rait: ‘‘At the beginning I had a tarnished view of ACC, I must admit . . . but they’re ordinary New Zealanders doing their best, as is required of them by the procedures.’’ Soper: ‘‘At times (the corporation) has definitely been a political football – the biggest change was in the 90s when it veered towards more of a private insurance line – and definitely there has been, at times, a culture of declining people rather than necessarily providing no-fault comprehensive cover.’’ But their trust is not a vehicle for lobbying Government and the two Labour stalwarts are quick to acknowledge that they’ve found FairWay has lived up to its role as an independent reviewer and that ‘‘clients do get a fair hearing’’ when it comes to testing those commonest of ACC assertions; that there was a preexisting condition or age-related degeneration. Oftentimes, the reason this can be challenged has been by referring back to specialists and getting them to comment on how their reports have, later on, been interpreted by the corporation. But the two also acknowledge functional goodwill plays a part. Soper: ‘‘In the past 12 to 18 months it’s probably been more positive,working with case managers to achieve good resolutions, rather than necessarily heading straight to review.’’ And if that’s where it does wind up, the two attest that FairWay has lived up to its independent brief. ‘‘People get a fair hearing,’’ Soper says. Not that it’s easy. They find themselves people who are distressed, in pain, twisting in frustrations and confusions, grieving for career damaged or lost, and stormtossed by not getting the support they might realistically expect. It’s not something they need to go through alone, unaided, Rait says.
‘‘At times (the corporation) has definitely been a political football . Lesley Soper