As a family who were victims of the January 18 bushfires I was horrified by your remarks of this week.

While the Bushfire Recovery Centre and its staff have been excellent regrettably other ACT government agencies have failed.

In particular your government's focus on block clearing and rebuilding ignores the fundamental issues relating to the mental, emotional and other support issues. This is not only about $ but the health of our community. Failure to satisfactorily deal with these issues will lead to significant mental health issues, family breakdown, marital breakdown, suicide. At present our children have to wait a fortnight for appointments with our assigned counsellor simply because there are not enough counsellors and because their needs are increasing. Further their government school has discontinued counselling.

Victorian consultant Dr Rob Gordon and Lieutenant-Colonel Don Woodland, of the Salvation Army, have both worked with victims of other disasters such as the Port Arthur shootings and Bali bombings.

Colonel Woodland said people seemed to be locked into the physical recovery, battling red tape and insurance companies to rebuild, and had not been able to consider their emotional and spiritual needs. He is seeking a meeting with Mr Stanhope, claiming the government assessment the recovery progress is going well is not correct.

"Talk to people on the ground, they don't think it's progressing well, and I think there has to be more communication between the administration and residents,"he said.

Dr Gordon said at six months, the rest of the community was moving on from a disaster but the victims could not. "Often those who have been coping so well until now are feeling very exhausted and that needs to be respected,"he said.