The Privacy Commission says it is working with counselling services and the Government to ensure sensitive personal information is kept safe and can be accessed by clients.
Relationships Aotearoa closes today with tens of thousands of case notes and files it holds needing a new home.
The Ministry of Social Development is accusing Relationships Aotearoa of being deliberately obstructive, and has urged it to work with the new providers to transfer client files.
Privacy Commissioner John Edwards, told Morning Report his office would offer help.
"An organisation that has been providing services for many years will have a considerable archive of very sensitive information. So some thought needs to be given to how that's dealt with and it may be that a trusted third party could provide a useful method for dealing with some of those old files."
Mr Edwards said it would have been better to have had more time to deal with the transfer of files and he was annoyed by a Ministry of Social Development media release suggesting he had said the transferring of such files would be straightforward.
