• About Me
  • Contact
  • Links to other stuff I’ve written

Nina Childish

~ and various brain kittens

Nina Childish

Monthly Archives: May 2016

Left Hanging – a letter of complaint

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by ninachildish in Blog, Mental Health

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

anxiety, CMHT, complaint, Mental Health, therapy

I have had the same few items languishing on my to-do list for 2 months. I just scored one of them off by emailing in a complaint to the CMHT exec. In a way, I think it might have been easier had it been a phone call. Anyway, I finally did it.

In March I called the home crisis team number I’d been given for emergencies. It didn’t go well….

To  whom it may concern,

I would like to make a complaint regarding the mental health trust.
I had an assessment with [specialist] in early December 2015 about the best options for therapy, how to go forward etc. At the end of our appointment he gave me some resources for self-help while waiting for therapy to begin, including a card for the CRHT (Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team) to use in emergencies, with the [local area] number circled on the back. The front of the card clearly states “The team will see you 24/7 in the community”.

Late on Saturday March 12th, I had a dissociative episode, and worrying that it would get worse and I would hurt myself, I called the circled number. Due to my anxiety,and especially compounded when dissociating, I am not great on the phone. The person who answered it (I can’t remember if they gave a name, but they were female) kept mishearing me or misunderstanding me, which made my dissociation worse (at one point she seemed to think I had children, and asked if they were safe). After a frustrating attempt to describe dissociative symptoms while dissociating, during which I was accused of not cooperating because I said I wasn’t feeling anything, I asked to see someone from the crisis team. It was then I learnt, for the first time, that in order to actually see one of the team, a “service user” must be pre-referred for community support, so all I could have was the phone call, which was making me feel worse. (In the end I hung up because I was scared it would push me past being able to recover that night.)

My complaint is that at no time before I needed to use the Home Treatment Team was I told that I needed to be pre-referred before I would qualify for home visits. Since a “service user” is unlikely to call a crisis number unless they are actually in acute crisis, this seems like a very risky policy. In my case, it made my acute mental health crisis worse to find that out after being further agitated by invasive questioning and allegations during the phone call.

I would appreciate it if you could reply to this message, as it is not an easy thing for me to make contact.
Yours faithfully,
Nina [Childish]
I feel rather silly complaining two months after the event, but also feel much better for having sent it. The kicker is, I have another really quite serious complaint to make about the same CMHT which I’m going to address in person at the start of next month. Two complaints already and therapy doesn’t even start until June…
[edit – sorry, no idea what’s happened with the formatting]

DWP: Disabled Woman, Persecuted.

12 Thursday May 2016

Posted by ninachildish in Blog, Disability, DWP, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

anxiety, benefits, disability, DWP, Mental Health, personal

I had two weeks of breathing easily, knowing I had all I was entitled to.
Two weeks of planning for the future, and not fretting for it instead.
Two weeks of optimism. Two weeks of happiness.
That’s all I got.

It took me 16 months after applying to get my ESA and PIP approved, the latter through a gruelling appeals process. It took another 5 months to convince the DWP that I was eligible for Severe Disability Premium so I could afford to pay for my own care. That fight took more energy than I thought I could ever muster; it could have mentally broken anyone, even if, like me, they didn’t already have serious mental health problems.

Then on Monday I got a letter. The brown envelope.
My rate of ESA is changing in December. Dropping drastically.
A phone call cleared it up:
I am being reassessed for PIP before December 17th, which Severe Disability Premium relies upon me receiving. So they will be taking it away pre-emptively, because they’re so confident they won’t need to reinstate it when I fail to cling onto the desperately needed PIP points. (It’s not even worth noting that my illness is incurable and progressive, is it?)

And just like that, my brief respite is over. My week has been punctuated with crying fits, temper, feelings of hopelessness. I am so scared that the remaining seven months of this year will go much the same as those sixteen limbo months, full of dread, apprehension, self-loathing and despair. I would have dearly loved a longer period of time without this hanging over me.

One week ago I was starting to prepare for the accessible-home-hunt, as things in my family home (which I was only ever supposed to be in very temporarily) are deteriorating. Now I can’t do it- not if there’s a chance I’ll lose PIP, and the Severe Disablement Premium with it. If that happens I’d have to move out again and back to here and that would take more energy and self-esteem than I could ever afford to give.

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • September 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014

Categories

  • access
  • Activism
  • Blog
  • Disability
  • DWP
  • Family
  • Government Cuts
  • health
  • Housing
  • Mental Health
  • Poetry
  • Politics
  • Reviews
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Powered by WordPress.com.