"Culturally incompetent"

Thank you for sharing your comments with us. We aspire to provide outstanding services so your feedback is very important to us as it will help us to learn and improve. We’re going to follow this up with the team involved and we’ll be back in touch on this forum within 10 working days.

Dear anonymous

I'm sorry that its taken me quite a while to get back to you but I felt it really important to have a discussion with the teams about your concerns.

It wasn't possible for us to establish which team you make reference to as we have two female wards at the Becklin Centre. I therefore asked both teams to get together and share the response and any learning on behalf of the women's service as a whole.

Firstly, we are very sorry that you have had a negative experience within the service.

All our staff receive Equality & Diversity training and we have access to translation services should they be required.

I agree that it isn't possible to know everything about every belief system and culture even with formal training; but what is expected of our staff is that they are able to talk with people respectfully and feel confident to ask culturally appropriate questions when they are unsure about things. A care plan written with the person using the services helps to ensure that their needs are being met in the best way possible.

In relation to culturally appropriate meals, we know that it's really important that the right option is available; it would never be our intention to serve food that is forbidden for reasons of health or faith. We do offer specialist menus and have dieticians available for those using the services. In addition we have an Occupational Therapy Team who are able to support people to shop and cook for ingredients to make meals that meet their needs in our Therapy Kitchen. Please be assured that we do take this matter seriously.

We want people to feel able to raise any concern with the Ward manager or staff team so that if something isn't working well we have an opportunity to address it as it happens in a timely way. If it's difficult to talk to staff at the time then there is also an independent Advocacy service available to support inpatients.

At the Becklin Centre you can also access the Patient Advice & Liason Service ( PALS) either in person or via telephone (08000525790) and they too are an impartial service who can help you to raise concerns.

If you do feel able to speak to someone in person to resolve these issues on a more personal level please let the Complaint’s Team (complaints.lypft@nhs.net) know and we would be really happy to meet with you to try and resolve.

With kind regards