"A bad experience"

Through the previous use of one of the SLAM Trust's mental services in Croydon, for treatment for anxiety and depression problems, between late 2012 and early 2013 I was put into the position of having little choice other than to cease contact with this service, due to unacceptable ways I was being treated as a patient/service user/customer and informal attempts to resolve this problem going nowhere. Ever since lodging my formal complaint early last year, when it came to almost everything I had to raise, the senior manager in charge of investigating my complaint treated me extremely unfairly/unacceptably (probably because part of my complaint was in connection with an unacceptable letter which had been signed by the person just before I lodged the complaint).

When I raised this situation to the attention of the Trust's Chief Executive it made no difference. Because it repeatedly happened staff members were not coming back to me on a timely basis, when I was writing this Trust relevant letters, I was put into the position of having to contact the Parliamentary Ombudsman and asking their advice/alerting my MP. I was advised by the Parliamentary Ombudsman to send SLAM a request for a final response letter. Not long after addressing this request to the Chief Executive, making it clear that I wished him to respond to me, I was later told by letter that the matter was being dealt with/reviewed by other staff members (although the situation did not call for it) and then told in the final letter response I received (which was from a different person) that one of the other senior staff members involved was saying that it was their view, after looking through my earlier letters to the Trust, that there were no outstanding things that needed to be answered/explained by the Trust - although it should have been obvious to anybody that this was not the case.

As a result of all this, I am now having to ask the Parliamentary Ombudsman Service to get involved. Had this Trust dealt with my complaint in a fair and reasonable way, by accepting full responsibility for the things they did which were wrong, there would be no need for me to do this - but as they have chosen not to do so, they have put me in this position. I think that the way that I have been treated by them is appalling.