"Trauma-focused therapy"

These people add to trauma rather than help resolve it. If you were not completely hopeless before, you will be after. We had to fight for years to get an appointment with a clinical psychologist for our (adult) son who had suffered a terrible street robbery who then could not go out alone, could not sleep, work or socialise etc but were fobbed off time and again with CBT with a trainee, despite a trained therapist recommending secondary trauma-focused counselling for PTSD and all NHS guidance recommending this too. After very damaging & non-recommended CBT practices carried out by the trainee, which actually served to embed unhelpful, self-critical thought processes and contributed to his life continuing to spiral out of control, I raised a formal complaint through PALS, which was also completely fobbed off at first. Only after PALS responded to the totally inadequate response was a meeting finally arranged, where I attended and explained the issues. I was given assurances this would be investigated and the trainee would be guided in relation to the "techniques" used. My son was then offered an appointment for a full assessment and when they asked to confirm his details, they had someone else's-you could not make it up! Needless to say my son did not return for that assessment and he continued acting recklessly until something he found to be catastrophic happened and he attempted suicide. Even then we had to be referred back in by the GP, be put on a waiting list etc. When he eventually got an appointment with a clinical psychologist, I was actually relieved!

After only the first session, my son said she had been patronising, rolling her eyes and paraphrasing what he had said in a sarcastic tone. He attended only one more appointment and refused to go again because of this. I actually thought he was just misinterpreting her and tried to persuade him to go back-how naive! To add insult to injury, we recently received a "discharge" letter, clearly showing my son to be right-she had not listened at all. The content summary held perhaps 3 correct pieces of information, the rest must have been about someone else. It discusses a recent ex-partner (he has been with his girlfriend for a decade) and a "somewhat chaotic" family life - he comes from a very stable family, two parents, married for 28 years, worked all their lives, have 5 children, all doing very well thank you until their son was viciously assaulted and failed terribly by this horrific service.

I strongly suggest the clinical psychologist in question looks in the mirror-the "service" there is chaotic, not us. She never once sought our input as a family or as the people who had supported him to get therapy and could have contributed valuable information. I guess this is what you get when you try to help your family and raise formal complaints-the standard response-discredit the complaint-maker? Disgusting, appalling and harmful practices going on here-stay away.