Relationships Aotearoa is in now in the control of liquidators

Liquidators are running multiple investigations into the financial management of Relationships Aotearoa, while the Government has voiced concerns the group inflated its client numbers.

But Social Development Minister Anne Tolley said she did not want to speculate over whether that was the reason the organisation was reluctant to hand over its files.

She appeared before Parliament's social services committee, along with ministry chiefs, on Wednesday to answer questions over the performance of her ministry and its contracts.

Relationships Aotearoa (RA), the country's largest counselling service, folded in early June, after it emerged it was forecasting a loss of $1.5 million for the current financial year.

RA's financial woes began when legislative changes in 2012 meant it lost $4 million in funding from its Ministry of Justice contracts.

Its closure came after weeks of negotiations, which became bitter when they progressed from talks of keeping RA afloat to managing the transfer of clients to other providers.

Liquidators PwC have assumed control of RA's assets and are working with five new providers to continue counselling services.

"What I understand is [PwC] are working first of all with Stand, and the Privacy Commissioner to transfer the clients. But certainly they are doing a number of investigations into both operational and financial issues," said Tolley. Stand Children's Services is one of the new providers.

"I've certainly got some worries about some of the discrepancies we're seeing; in the numbers of clients and staff, with what was said publicly and what is actually coming through [from the liquidators]."

Relationships Aotearoa had claimed it served about 30,000 clients in a full year, and had about 7000 on its books at any one time. In later reports, that figure was lowered to about 4000.

"It doesn't look anything like that," Tolley said.

It is understood liquidators believe the number to be closer to 700.

RA's chief executive Jacqui Akuhata-Brown✓ said she did not want to be involved in a "slanging match".

"The poor organisation was not on a good path when I went there. So saving the millions that I did was a good effort, but clearly it wasn't going to be good or fast enough.

"That's really unfortunate for RA."

She dismissed claims RA had misrepresented its client figures, saying the Government was conflating the total yearly number with the weekly snapshot figures.

Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni said the Government had acted in bad faith.

"RA had asked for three months to work with their clients in moving them to the Government's preferred service providers. Instead MSD only offered them 10 weeks, during which they would receive no funding."

Client files were languishing in offices, and hadn't been touched by liquidators, she said.

"There are technical issues around their removal – making a fiction of Social Development Minister Anne Tolley's assurances no-one would be without support during the handover.

"To add to that [deputy chief executive Murray Edridge] and the Privacy Commissioner have been at odds over the complexity of the file transfer process, with the commissioner expressing considerable annoyance at MSD claiming it would be straight-forward."

Edridge rejected the claim. He said files for current clients, which were under the control of PwC, hadn't been removed from current offices because many of the offices were still operational under Stand Children Services.

It would be "nonsensical" to remove the files before providers had a chance to see whether those offices would be moved.

Stand had taken over 46 of the 63 clinical staff employed by RA.

MSD was working with the commissioner to gain the consent of the clients to transfer them across to Stand.