Men's abuse counselling agency forced to close

Rotorua's oldest counselling service for men who abuse their partners has been forced to close, saying public money is being wasted on "talk" about violence instead of going into actual services.

Rotorua Violence Prevention Services, which has provided counselling since 1997, will close on July 31 despite a $14 million Government advertising campaign urging men to get help for violence.

Co-founder Haydn Olsen said the agency depended on funding from the Family Court and the Probation Service for men under court orders to get counselling, and that did not cover men who sought help voluntarily.

"There are a lot more men out there coming forward saying, `I want to do something, I need help'," he said.

"There is plenty of money out there for spreading the message, but there is just not the money to support programmes to stop the violence."

In an impassioned article which he has sent around the country, he wrote: "With all the Government and community money that is available, it is amazing how little of it is actually used to stop violence.

"The money is wasted on financial and organisational systems, paying people to talk about it and getting them to run in ever widening circles creating a semblance of activity.

"Very little actually seeps down to feed the work of changing perpetrators' lives."

He said he and his wife, Liz, had been working unpaid for the past six months so they could keep paying their part-time administrator and trainee group facilitators.

Their main income now comes from a consulting business on workplace violence and bullying. They also charge fees for their voluntary domestic violence clients of $30 for a group session and $60 for an individual session, but the fees often went unpaid.

He said two rival agencies, Relationship Services and Family Focus Rotorua, had entered the field in the city in the past year. "That's been part of the problem."

National Network of Stopping Violence Services manager Brian Gardner said the Olsens' agency was not a member of his network and he did not know of any other agency facing similar problems.