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Poor communication on many levels

Story from nhs.uk

"Poor communication on many levels"

About: Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

I am writing this as a friend and care giver. My friend is on the Autistic Spectrum but highly functioning. She has a job and PhD, unfortunately she has been feeling suicidal lately.

Her GP refered her to IAPT, and IAPT put a referal into the CMHT and Crisis team. They told her to contact the Single Point Access Service to find out the progress of her referral and what CMHT team she would be under.

My daughter phoned the SPA number and was told a clinician would be in touch. She explained she spoke to a clinician yesterday who said they would update her this morning. (Autistic spectrum people are literal morning has to be before noon)

Eventualy a clinician phoned back and was unbelievably rude. The told her because she was not in Crisis they can't help. she explained she needed information not help. She was told to ring PALs

She phoned PALS who told her to speak to someone senior. She was directed back to the same clinician who said "Don't ring this number again"

I can appreciate clinicians should not be dealing with admin queries, but IAPT and PALs both told her to ring the SPA number for more info.

Secondly you told a suicidal person not to call the Crisis team. Mental health staff should communicate more clearly especially when autistic spectrum people and say "Dont ring this number unlesss_____"

Luckily the original person that arranged to call my friend called her. Although it was no longer morning, she was lovely and reassuring.

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Responses

Response from Linda Rose, Head of Nursing and Patient Experience, Nursing Professions and Quality, Leeds and York Partnership NHS Trust 5 years ago
Linda Rose
Head of Nursing and Patient Experience, Nursing Professions and Quality,
Leeds and York Partnership NHS Trust

Submitted on 20/03/2019 at 14:17
Published on Care Opinion at 16:21

picture of Linda Rose

Hello

I have directly contacted the Clinical operations manager for this team following reading your posting. We both agreed that not only was the response disappointing but that there are some clear conduct issues in addition to inappropriate signposting to the PALS team. We do hope that you feel able to contact our complaints team on complaints.lypft@nhs.net so that we can investigate the issues raised appropriately. The behaviours you describe are not of the standards expected of anyone in the organisation and staff being rude and dismissive isn't something I am going to defend at all in this response. Whilst I've noted that there was a more positive response from the second clinician, this is what anyone in contact with our services should expect as standard practice in line with our Trust values.

To be clear, it is acceptable for GP's or IAPT to signpost to the Single Point of Access (SPA) service to clarify the progress of a CMHT referral and this should be achieved without too much difficulty. However there may be a timing issue in that the CMHT is a 9-5 service which may impede on the SPA team getting an update until the next working day, therefore prompting the call back. This isn't an ideal situation and I appreciate that delays in information updates are challenging for anyone expecting a call back as well as those with specific needs.

The team have recently had some training to improve their skill set to help them to communicate with service users on the autistic spectrum and will continue to keep this aspect in the training programme.

I will ask the Clinical operations manager to share your posting with the team and discuss management of call backs in the service team meetings.

As noted earlier in my response, we would like to help further so please make contact with our complaints team.

With kind regards

.

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