My Second Letter of Complaint

I’m really sorry that this blog seems to have become all about my ongoing complaint, rather than all issues relating to Schizophrenia and Mental Health care in general.

After receiving a letter from the Chairman of the Trust this morning I have been really angry all day. All I keep thinking is “How dare you! Don’t you dare try to sweep my complaint under the carpet again like you did last time!” and I’ve just been pacing the floor all day because I’m so angry.

I’ve written my letter of response anyway, and I would really appreciate some feed back on how it comes across and if any of it should be changed.


“Dear [Mr Scumbag],

Thank you for your letter dated 4th April 2007. Like you, I have also decided to copy this letter to all parties concerned, including [the name of], the Manager at [the respite home], and [the name of the], Complaints Manager.

Personally I find it completely inappropriate and unprofessional to point out the supposed errors of an individual in a letter and then forward it to so many people, thus undermining their authority on a particular subject in the eyes of others, but seeing as you have set the standard in this regard I presume you have no qualms with me doing likewise.

As you so rightly pointed out, the reductions in your budget which took place last year did not affect the funding of [the respite home], but to say that [the respite home] has been “wholly unaffected by those changes” is inaccurate to say the least.

As you well know, [the respite home] offers a range of services as well as short term respite, including but not limited to rehabilitation for individuals who have become less independent through prolonged stays in hospital, with 24 hour support. Previously [a different home] also provided this service, with a total of 10 beds, 6 of which included 24 hour support. Since the “reconfiguration” of services – or cut backs in layman’s terms – [this other home] can no longer offer 24 hour support to any of its users, and provides only 4 beds for rehabilitation, 6 fewer than what was available previously.

[The respite home] is now the only service in the North of the county which provides this kind of 24 hour support for service users. In addition to this, there are obviously a great deal more people on the waiting list for rehabilitation at [the respite home] who would previously have stayed at [the other home]. In response to this, the Manager at [the respite home], [A N Other], obviously had to find ways to accommodate for this increase in demand, and so it was decided that one of the respite beds would be used for this purpose, leaving only one respite bed.

It is my understanding that this decision was made partly to fulfil demand for rehabilitation beds, but also because the respite beds were actually being underused. This brings me to the second point in your letter which was entirely false.

You state that [Mr Man] only used the services at [the respite home] twice last year, and that the reduction in this provision was based on this. I can assure you that [Mr Man] stayed three times last year, and I am happy to provide the dates of his stays if you wish me to. In fact I actually needed him to be able to stay five times last year, and I am outraged to learn that the respite beds were being underused when I needed to take advantage of them so badly. Until my recent conversation with [the Manager at the respite home] I have always been led to believe that we were entitled to only three breaks a year and no more. I wonder how other service users and their carers would feel at knowing that services which were so sorely needed were going to waste by not being offered to them.

Indeed, rather than [Mr Man] having his respite stays reduced due to lack of use by us, it is a fact that all service users who use [the respite home] have had this provision reduced.

If you are sincere in believing that your false statements are true then I am more than a little disconcerted that you appear to be so unaware of what goes on within your own Trust, and unaware of how changes to one service can directly affect another. I would appreciate you taking a little more interest in the matters at hand, rather than trying to neatly sweep the whole issue under the carpet through denial, which, in my previous experience, seems to be the usual course of action by the [county] NHS Trust.

Finally, I would just like to add that I have spoken to [the Manager at the respite home] and she has been most obliging in allowing [Mr Man] to stay at [the respite home] at least three times a year. I am very grateful to her for accommodating our needs in this way, but would like to stress that the purpose of my original letter was to highlight with our own personal experiences as an example, how cutbacks in Mental Health Services affect all service users and their carers, not simply to procure extra respite breaks for [Mr Man] and myself.”


There is so much more that I want to add to this letter, mostly insults, but I’m doing my best to refrain! I really wanted to add something like: “I find your denial patronising and insulting to my intelligence, and I wonder what it is that you have done in your life that was so great that you presume you have the right to treat another individual in such a disgraceful way.” But I thought that was a little too “Elizabeth Bennett”!