The One in Four service, which assists people who were sexually abused as children, will receive 25 per cent less funding from the Department of Health this year than they did in 2003. Patsy McGarry reports.
The service, which is run by people who themselves were sexually abused as children, employs therapists who are qualified to the highest professional standards and who are accredited to relevant profession bodies, One in Four director, Mr Colm O'Gorman said last night.
He also said he is writing to the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, seeking clarification of his Department's understanding of services provided by One in Four. Mr O'Gorman was responding to a report in yesterday's Sunday Tribune which, based on Department of Health records, indicated directors of the National Counselling Service had questioned the ethics of "the abused counselling the abused", as at One in Four.
Mr O'Gorman said supervision of therapeutic work at One in Four was beyond what was required. He found the National Counselling Service concern about the abused counselling abused "an extraordinary position to adopt". It suggested their attitude to the abused, clients of their own, was that they were "so indelibly flawed they were beyond recovery and always slightly unhealthy and dangerous".
Therapists at One in Four followed the same ethical guidelines as other colleagues elsewhere and were bound by the same strictures where boundaries were concerned, he said.