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Referred Three Times - No help received

Posted By SunMoon

"Referred Three Times - No help received"

About: Highly Specialist Services / Sheffield adult autism and neurodevelopmental services (SAANS)

(as a service user),

I've been referred twice for autism (Maybe even a third? I lost track) and once for ADHD. 

REFERRAL 1:

I was given an appointment for autism - all they could do was tell me to attend a social group and then ignore me for the next couple of years. I had a family member ring and they were told that we weren't on the list and had to be referred again. 

REFERRAL 2:

I got another appointment after another referral. They told me that they didn't have what I needed available. I have been ignored again since and haven't been contacted since about any appointments. 

REFERRAL 3:

I was rejected instantly after waiting months. I didn't even make it onto the waiting list. This made me feel absolutely hopeless and depressed. 

This service is an absolute joke. Years of my life wasted. 

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Responses

Response from Nurse Consultant, Sheffield Aadult Autism and Neurodevelopment Service, Sheffield Health and Social Care nearly 2 years ago
We have made a change
Sheffield Health and Social Care

Submitted on 04/05/2022 at 10:04
Published on Care Opinion at 11:18

I am sorry for your disappointment about your referral for ADHD diagnostic assessment being rejected. As this comment is anonymous we are unable to provide specific feedback about your referral. However, we do base the decision upon the information provided by the referrer. Sometimes the referrer does not include all the information that we require and we have to reject the information based on what they have described. We do give feedback to each referrer about why the referral was rejected. We have done some improvement work recently on our referral criteria and we have fed this back to referrers in order to improve the quality of the referrals. We get in excess of 200 referrals per month for ADHD diagnostic assessment therefore we have to be clear about what meets the criteria for assessment. I am sorry for the impact of this and please contact your GP should your mental health deteriorate further.

Update posted by SunMoon (a service user)

"We do give feedback to each referrer about why the referral was rejected" - for me you didn't. I only found out about the rejection through a receptionist at my GP - which is frankly a terrible way to find out. I also received no feedback whatsoever, I was just told about the rejection. And if this weren't a public message, I'd happily give over my name and details.

I'm also supposed to already be with your autism service (I've already had two appointments from two different referrals for the same service) but I haven't heard anything from them for over two years. And contact your GP? What are they going to do, refer me back to just get rejected again? It's an endless cycle with you guys. Every time I go in for mental health help it always ends in a referral to you - which has happened twice (technically three) now as stated above.

Thank you for replying, but it just isn't helpful to me.

Response from Nurse Consultant, Sheffield Aadult Autism and Neurodevelopment Service, Sheffield Health and Social Care nearly 2 years ago
Sheffield Health and Social Care

Submitted on 07/09/2022 at 09:43
Published on Care Opinion at 10:52

We provide your GP with quite detailed feedback about why referrals may be declined. I am sorry that you found out via the reception staff at the surgery. I wonder if there is some way to raise this with your GP practice? We would be more than happy to provide you with a copy of the letter for your reference. If you can call the service on 0114 271 6964, reception staff would be more than happy to print out a copy and post it/email it to you.

I hear that the pathways seem confusing and that you feel that you are being passed from one service to another however, you are still entitled to mental health support if required/assessed as necessary whilst been on one of our waiting lists. This can be accessed via our single point of access service of which you can speak to your GP about a referral.

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