Why am I still angry

Am I angry about something to do with the Adult Mental Health Service. You bet your life I am.

Since raising my complaints in Feb, March, July and September 2010, I have followed the letters up, had several meetings, with all sorts of people , including the Chief Executive Officer. I have been lied to, fobbed off, ignored, but I have not had any answers or explanations.

Part of my complaint referred to the many shortcomings of the so inappropriately named Crisis Resolution Team. I had a meeting 18 months ago at which I was promised some answers and explanations.

I met the team manager last February, and made my points, he promised a letter in two weeks with some answers, when it had not arrived in the summer I wrote again. Apparently he had not written because our meeting was informal, he assumed I did not want a response. We met again in November, I was promised a letter early December after a team meeting. Guess what? Still nothing in mid January.

After a meeting with the Drioector responsible for the AMHS I was invited to become involved in a project called “Improving the Experience” where carers and service users will talk one-to-one with service providers to explain their issues, and for the service providers to start to understand to issues. From this a process to educate and improve will be brought in and we will see improvement.

I have also met and had a long and informative, both ways, conversation with the current acting Chief Executive, and a meeting to look at the proposed outline of a new acute pathway model.

These meetings, and the Improving the Experience programme fill me with optimism for the future, it really looks as though they are seriously looking to understand the problems and to make changes. I can’t get too excited yet, not until we see the results of the processes, and of course the previous CEO is due back which could change things again.

So, this looks encouraging so why am I still angry. I’ll tell you that now.

During the 18 months leading up to the first complaint, and indeed through the year and a bit between the first complaint and my wifes transfer to a ward where the staff actually know what they are doing, and take a pride in doing it, there have been countless issues to complain about.. some 43 pages of A4 of complaints to raise.

Some of the things that I have seen staff do, not only the ward staff, but also consultants, Community Psychiatric Nurses, Community Health Centre Staff, Social Workers and the Chief Executive himself, have been mind boggling bad. These are not issues about money, they are all about attitude and basic competence.

Several of the incidents have been so serious that, were I in charge, the people involved would have been dismissed instantly. Some of the transgressions have been severely negligent bordering at times on being close to criminal..

What has been done about these individuals? Absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.  They have been allowed to behave disgracefully, with the blessing of the Trust. It looks to me as though the Trust condones this sort of incompetence and uncaring callous behaviour.

Why are they allowed to do that? It is because of two things. Their own internal procedures allow them to investigate complaints thoroughly, but only to the extent that they investigate that there are procedures in place to deal with the situation. There is no procedure in place to investigate whether the procedures were followed well or badly, no procedure to investigate individual performance.

Even worse than this, the watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspects the service on a regular basis, but after a meeting with them to discuss their whitewash of the shambles that is the Brandon Centre and Bradgate Unit, they say that they can only investigate whether there is a procedure and whether it has been followed. No way to investigate the quality of the performance.

Let’s think of this. You go into the hospital to have a leg removed, they remove the wrong one, but all of the procedures have been followed, albeit very very badly. Their conclusion is that nothing has gone wrong, there is nothing amiss.

Although the new initiatives are aimed at improving the standards, and making individuals accountable for their errors, can we be confident that this will happen. I am not confident.

But the thing that makes me very angry is this… staff have been allowed to act in an irresponsible, negligent, dishonest, uncaring, uncompassionate and incompetent way and have not even been told.

Simply because there are procedures in place, their disgusting performance is accepted by the Trust