General Uk Supporter/sufferers Advice Needed

[wife of]

OK was not sure which section was best for this so I hope it is ok to pop it in here.

Hubbies social services care co-ordinator was prving useless so we recently asked for him to be replaced by a community psyciatric nurse.

It was our understanding initialy that she would come to see him weekly in a pastoral/asessment role ,however since the social services team had a risk asessment meeting with regard to my husband it has been decided that no one is allowed to come to our house to see him and he must therefore go and attend appointments at our local social services hub.

This is regreatable but we can understand that due to thier fear of having a staff member sue them it has been introduced as a precaution(no help has been forthcoming in providing any respite to me who has to live with this 24/7 along with my teenage brittle boned son!) .

It would now appear that the CPN assigned to my husband has no intention of meeting with my husband,anywhere,under any staffing level,leaving us with phone access to her only!

Yesterday I made contact with her to relay my misgivings over a recent med change and to ask that someone come out as a matter of some urgency to asess my husbands mental state as he was at crises point.

I was basicaly told that nothing could be done yesterday and they also advised against taking him to the local crises team at our local hospital in case it induced a major flashback asking me instead to wait until today for a phone call from them.

I asked them what I should do for me then last night as by this point my husband was threatening to remove himself from the family home and sleep rough so that he would have some space from the situation.

I managed to persuade him to let me bring him away to a relatives house on the otherside of the country to get some headspace.

So my understanding thus far is that he will have no contact with his cpn/care coordinator other than by phone and she refuses to make any recommendations to his doctor ref his meds as she has not seen him!

So I now need to get back there tomorrow and verbaly bash some ears.

If anyone has any thoughts on this,legal insight,info on mht best practise then please drop me a reply as I will have to put some prior planning into these phone calls and every little will help.

This cannot be right and I will not let it continue.

 

[amethist]

Hi Wife of

Good luck with all of this, your going to need it and more. Fighting for crisis help was a nightmare for us too. It is not right and it is bang out of order, but it is how it is.

A short version of a long story, one Saturday night a few years ago.

Hubby was in melt down, not loud melt down, quite and not knowing which planet he was on and scared of what was happening to him. So I phoned NHS helpline for help and support, they were on answer phone for over 2 hours.

I eventually, by phoning various places, got hold of our local crisis team office number. But as he was not registered with them, they told me I had to go through the NHS helpline system. WTF, yep them on answer phone and hubby in crisis mode. :mad:

I ended up with help, via web cam, from another member of the forum, for almost 5 hours, who lives in the USA.

After all sorts of other episodes and no help, we finally received some help from community support, though she knew very little about PTSD, basically just what PTSD stood for.

Hubby now has good support from a male CPN, who does understand a lot about PTSD. Unfortunately he has been off work ill, but was due back on Monday. If he had come back he would have rung to arrange to come out and see my husband. As he has not rung, and it now being Thursday, we can only assume that he has not yet returned to work, but no one has had the decency to ring and let us know anything.

We are so used to managing without any support, this is un-exceptable, but past experience has taught us not to rely on anyone.

One thing I did do one time, when we were told someone would come out and see him later that day. 2 pm in the afternoon, and they would get out to see him around 11 pm that night. I insisted they see him as he was, and bundled him into a taxi, and took him to A&E, to see the crisis team there. But never again, they have not got a clue about PTSD, they sent him home with a referral to community care.

If you have to shout and kick doors down to get help then do it. Keep doing it until someone listens.

Amethist

 

[Grim]

Hello 'wife of' .... have you considered phoning the Director responsible for mental health care at your local Primary Care Trust and 'voicing your concerns', if you can't get them on the phone try the Chief Executives PA. If you don't get any joy there, then the next person would be the Chief Executive of your Strategic Health Authority (eg: East Midlands in my case). http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/authoritiesandtrusts.aspx#strategic

I would ignore the complaints and PALS route (if possible) - which may be offered to you, as both are designed to mitigate the hospitals position. You will just receive a soapy letter where nothing is said or done, but they will 'thank you for bringing the issue to their attention!

As for me - I'm not getting anywhere fast with PTSD treatment from the NHS, but I am in a just about working process of waiting, and distraction at the moment, so I haven't moved myself to the above recourse - yet.

However, when I've had ridiculous problems to overcome (a botched operation leaving my elderly father with little sight and my mother not being fed for a day whist in hospital) - the above route has worked very well a couple of times.

I'm sure you will get it sorted - I sense you have drive and determination.

 

[Toria]

I have no advice I'm afraid but just wanted to add a voice to the discussion on how woeful the UK system is. When husband had his initial breakdown myself and my neighbour went with him to A&E in an ambulance. The ambulance men were fantastic and knew that something was badly wrong. In A&E they pronounced him a drunk ex-soldier and tried to send him home to sober up. By this time he hiding from "children" behind a bed and shaking like a leaf. Go figure.

The best support we've had has been from Combat Stress - I'm presuming that they're involved with your husband Wife Of? In the last mailing they sent us they said that they were starting an in-patent treatment programme. Not sure if it's up and running yet, but would that be of any help?