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Egregiously inadequate support for patient

Posted By travellerym64

"Egregiously inadequate support for patient"

About: Acute and urgent care / Inpatient wards

(as a relative),

Egregiously inadequate support for patient - a foreign national -detained under mental health act

Writing this in great distress from a country on the other side of the world.

A family member is currently hospitalised, obviously very ill; and at present has no -we truly  mean 'no' - friends, family, colleagues or other support people in the UK.

Our communication via email to the first ward during this admission was unanswered and unacknowledged.  

Having already been hospitalised for close to a month our family member has only  just been set up with a method to communicate with us, thanks to the kind assistance of a staff member.

Our family member hospitalised there is without any formal ID - all documents are lost. They have no funds and we believe, no access to any financial support until ID is re-established.

They are apparently without shoes or their own clothes and state they have been since admission several weeks ago. By their own account they are wearing a few items of donated clothes, need a hair cut, and need new underwear, other basic clothing, and assistance with the process of reapplying for all ID documents, which must come from the country of origin (or our country's embassy there in London).

This is an unacceptable state of affairs. How is it that someone can be detained under the mental health act, and left so totally alone, unaided and unsupported?

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Responses

Response from Winson Keens-Douglas, Clinical Effectiveness Officer, South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust 2 years ago
Winson Keens-Douglas
Clinical Effectiveness Officer,
South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust

Submitted on 23/07/2021 at 14:49
Published on Care Opinion at 14:49

Dear Relative, thank you for taking the time to post your feedback.

I am very sorry to hear about you feeling that there has been a lack of support for patient/ foreign national detained under mental health act.

It is a truly terrible thing to have a family member who is hospitalized in a foreign country and very ill without support and friends and family around them. we understand your concerns and this is not what we would want your experience to be and as a Trust and we would like to see how best we can assist you. However we will need to be able to identify the patient and where he or she is with their name and date of birth to be able to help you further.

I would like to invite you to contact our PALS team directly with some more information of your name and details so that can follow this up for you or if you would like to share anything else with us. We would then be able to address this issue directly.

You can contact our PALS team by email on pals@swlstg.nhs.uk

you can also contact us by phone on our PALS line (0203 513 6150) between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm weekdays or with the email address provided above.

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