Working My Way through The (S)Hit List!!!

Due to recent goings on, a couple of important 'To Do's' have been put on the back burner.

Have now had time and space, and although still have a cold, am managing to get out of bed and with enough energy (at least for now) to start doing again.

Things that needed my attention

1)Writing letter to head office of credit card supplier in regards to companies being allowed to take money from my credit card without my authorisation. Duly written and in the post.

2) Reponse to the Manager of the Emergency Duty Team (whose email was pretty lame and was basically saying that I was victimising them because they are under-resourced)

3) The paperwork from the local council. That is in the pending file until I get the next lot of re-assessment paperwork.

4) Getting to GP and ensuring I have enough lorazepam to tide me over into the new year. Possibly, in light of discussions with shrinky dink last Monday, I will ask for a month's supply. That way I am not wasting time and appointments (which other people could make better use of) going to the GP every 2 weeks. Will make appointment on Monday to discuss this with GP.

So far so, relatively, good. As in at least I know where I am at with all this.

And for anyone interested in how the saga, in regards to out of hours crisis support is going, this is my response:

Dear ......

I have now read through ............'s(Manager of the Emergency Duty Team) response and wish to respond directly to them. If that is not possible, then could you kindly forward my response?

I will copy you and Acute Services Director into my response and also my MP because I am very disatissfied. In fact, I feel quite insulted by being advised that the Samaritans are an organisation that should/could be contacted in crisis situations. I feel the responsibility for providing the right care, certainly in regards to my father’s situation, should lay with MH services and/or the Emergency Duty Team.

I do think there needs to be a more integrated, comprehensive and user friendly crisis system (network) delivered by BLPT and Social Services. However, from what Acute Services Director told me at the resolution meeting, they are looking into crisis intervention provided by Beds and Luton Partnership Trust. I am satisfied, for the time being, that this provides an opportunity to make crisis care/support a more service user focussed set of services in the future. However, in the present, I am not satisfied that should my father need crisis care, it will be easily accessible to him (and certainly not out of the working hours of his community mental health team).

As I stated before, our situation is, if not unique, quite rare, in that both my father and myself suffer mental illness (without a local family/friendship network) who are able to help us. Therefore, there are times, crisis times, when we have and may well still need crisis care and getting it should not be like trying to work our way through an obstacle course.

I am copying ......MP into this communication as I wish him to be aware that things have not been resolved to my satisfaction and I would like to keep him up to date on what is going on and what I think are the problems for people (like my father and myself) when trying to get appropriate care in extremely frightening and potentially life threatening situations.

Yours etc-ingly