Letter to BLPT

Dear Dr X
I am giving up on any expectation of support from CMHT and hence will not be keeping my appointment with you on December 4th.
When I saw you last, on 30th October, you suggested that I needed CMHT support due to my increased difficulties. You were the first to inform me that CMHT services in mytown had been reorganised and that the K team, to which I had been allocated, no longer existed. I was very upset when you said that I would now be with BE team, and reminded you of the circumstances which led to my allocation to K CMHT. You said then that you would ensure that I was allocated a care coordinator with BW CMHT.
I wrote to you on November 13th, sending a copy of my letter to you by email, and further copies to the PALS service and to the CEO, stating that I had heard nothing from CMHT. I had no response regarding these concerns.
When I saw my GP on November 19th, she was concerned that I still had no CMHT support and told me that she would fax you to request that such support was allocated. This seems to have triggered a response, because on November 20th I received an email from you stating that you had spoken to the BW team manager and that my case “will be discussed in the team meeting on Tuesday 25th November 2008 and a care coordinator will be allocated.”
To date I have had no contact from the team. My CMHT notes should contain my home phone number (where I have an answer phone), my address, my email address, my work phone number and my mobile phone number, as all of these have been provided to CMHT. None of these methods of contact seem to have been used to try to inform me about the availability of support.
Over the past five weeks I have found things increasingly difficult. Were it not for the support of my GP and my privately funded counselling, I do not know, at times, how I would have coped. BLPT has, once again, failed to provide me with promised, appropriate support at a time when I needed it, when it was promised to me, and when medical professionals recognised that I needed such support. The same happened when I was initially referred to BLPT services, when a previous Care Coordinator decided to cease my care, and when another Care Coordinator was on long term sick leave. The repeated failure to provide this support has reinforced my belief that I am not worth helping and has damaged my willingness to trust.
I have had repeated experiences of being failed by BLPT services, with support disappearing, being withdrawn, or failing to materialise. I do not wish to ignore the support I have received in the past, particularly from DL, S and DB but these experiences have been outweighed by repeated broken promises and failures. I do not understand how it could be that you stated that I urgently needed CHMT support, promised to ensure that CHMT support, and yet I have been left without any CMHT support for a period of over five weeks. Waiting for support to materialise from BLPT has been intensely damaging to me; hence on this occasion I have made the decision to wait no longer.

Provision of information...

I wonder whether this week will bring the remaining documents I have requested from BLPT (under Data Protection). They were promised last week, and the week before that, but haven't yet materialised.
I also wonder whether Bedfordshire and Luton Partnership Trust have yet submitted my clinical records to the Healthcare commission. They were requested to do so by April 4th; that deadline was extended by 10 days, then by another 10 (which took us to April 24th). I have heard nothing which suggests to me that the information has been received by HCC - and I'm not holding my breath. But why is it taking them so long? Someone maybe is having to look very carefully at said records? Or maybe trying to retrieve them (they seem to be in at least 6 different locations, despite the recommendation that there should be one set of clinical notes only).
Like I said, I'm not holding my breath. But it does make me feel very suspicious. Of course, it could just be another facet of the general ineptitude and lack of concern they have already shown with regard to complaints.

BLPT board meeting

Due to be held this Wednesday. Selected highlights from the minutes from the previous meeting:
Lots of money to be spent on employing new people in management. Less money to be spent on people who work with those in need of help.

Cuts in services to achieve CRES savings did not have the desired effect of saving pots of money. More cuts needed - one suggestiong being to discharge lots of people back to primary care.

Lots of people who work directly with members of the public are off ill. 20% of posts in WAMH covered by temporary staff. No figure given for the number of posts not covered at all during staff absences. This is probably seen as a GOOD THING since it saves the Trust money.

Data surrounding complaints "incomplete". Surprised? No, I didn't think so.

Lots of people owe money to the Trust.

More new "steering groups" to be set up. "Death by committees"? Well, they have to look busy.

Several reports criticised as not being good enough.

And from the performance report:
Sewnior doctors to discharge lots of service users to primary care.
All referrals to go through a central point (one way of limiting access, perhaps?)
Lots and lots and lots of facts and figures and graphs. Looks like management are doing something even if all they are doing is generating the facts and figures and graphs.
There are lots of risks to sevice users (and to the reputation of the Trust) but nothing is being done to change this - they can be "managed" by CMHTs (even though they present risk....)
Only 6 complaints and 42 queries were handled by the (2? or more?) staff working in Complaints and PALS in the last month. That must be an average of two per working day. How I would like that workload! The main concerns highlighted seem to be recording ethnic origin of complainants. No mention of the survey. But I have received a copy ... I wonder if I am the only one. I suspect so.

Ho hum. Glad to see service users are at the heart of all this. Yeah, right.

Timescales and (missed) deadlines

Having been told on April 3rd that the Complaints Policy for BLPT " is going through the final stages of the implementation process and should beavailable on the internet within the next 10 working days," I have now been updated (following enquiries) with the information that it, "is scheduled to be ratified by the Service User and Carer Committee on 9th May 2008. Once ratified it will be made available on the internet site within a week. "
The service user survey, I am informed by the same source, "has not yet been issued to the service users. There may be a number of reasons for this,not least that the National Service User Survey is currently being undertaken. " Well, I suppose this *may* be an explanation, but given that the survey is being undertaken by the Healthcare Commission and, as far as I understand it, compiling the results has nothing to do with the Trust, I can't see how this should affect their workload.
The PALS office offered the comment, "For your information the PALS and Complaints Questionnaire was only initiated in October 2007 and went for consultation in January 2008. " I have pointed them to the online Trust Board papers which show that the initial deadlines for distributing the survey were as stated in my previous entry - December 2006 and December 2007. Maybe I should suggest they read here - they might learn something.

Mandy writes of a very sad event not unrelated to the work of BLPT on her blog.

I haven't yet had any communication from the Healthcare Commission as to whether or not they have received my clinical and complaint notes from BLPT Complaints Department. The extended deadline ended last Tuesday. I'm not holding my breath! As Marcella commented, it's getting easier for BLPT (or at least its Complaints Department) to meet the expectations of service users (as stated in BLPT's mission statment) - we don't have many expectations left.

Service User Survey

I had a reply to my email asking for a copy of the above today. This is the survey which the February Trust Performance Report said was being sent out in February. The same survey which the Board undertook to send out by December 2006, then by December 2007.

Apparently it has not yet been sent out to service users as amendments were requested to the final draft. I'm assured I will get a copy as soon as it has been "finalised".

Looks like December 2008 might be more likely. Or maybe not... I will not have had contact with the complaints or PALS service within the previous 6 months if progress continues at this rate.

Go on, Become a Member of this wonderful Trust (so urges their website), which states among its Principal Objectives:
We aim to exceed the expectations of our Service Users with the quality and responsiveness of our services.
You know it makes sense. Yeah, right.

I stand by my previous cynical views.