Care Opinion

Late notice of commencement of therapy

Posted By L__

"Late notice of commencement of therapy"

About: Inclusion Thurrock (Talking Therapies)

(as a service user),

I was told during my assessment that even though it will say at least 3-4 months wait for my therapy to start, it is actually more of a 1-2 month wait so this got my hopes up and I kept waiting. 6.5 months in, my mental health was declining so much I had to start private therapy.

A week after I started, an unfortunate timing that I know cannot be helped, I had a text message from Inclusion about a upcoming appointment which did not specify a time so I assumed I would be given plenty of notice in a letter so waited for this. The day after, I received the letter this morning which gave me a date for two days later, early in the morning.

I cannot attend this date besides the fact I was given 48 hours notice on a non-working day, of this appointment after waiting 7 months.

It then says on the letter I could get discharged if I do not give 48 notice I cannot attend.

Today is Saturday and inclusion is not open. I left a voicemail but unsure if it will be time stamped and listened to in time.

For a therapy service this has caused a lot of anxiety and worry which I assume will continue during my weekend off of work.

The letter says it was posted at the end of June which should have got to me sooner (no fault of inclusion, but should have been kept in mind considering current postal delays). It is not tracked so I have no idea of how to prove the letter was only put through my door today.

I feel I am being set up to fail given only 48 hours notice of an appointment after waiting 7 months. Not how someone wishes to start their relationship with a therapy service.

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Responses

Response from Mark Frost, Clinical Lead, Inclusion Thurrock NHS Talking Therapies nearly 2 years ago
Mark Frost
Clinical Lead,
Inclusion Thurrock NHS Talking Therapies

Manage the team of therapists, and do some therapy myself.

Submitted on 02/08/2023 at 11:24
Published on Care Opinion at 11:24

Dear L__,

Thank you for your feedback and I am sorry to hear your experience has not been in line with our usual expectations. The timelines you describe are significantly longer than any of our average waits, so I would encourage you to contact me directly to discuss the situation.

It's typical for around 80% of our patients to be seen for therapy within 8 weeks of their assessment appointment, so six and a half months seems unduly long. I can understand why you were concerned and looked for alternatives. There are instances where some people wait longer for treatment, but these are usually due to limited patient availability rather than long waiting lists in the service.

Reading through your experience of appointment letters and reminders also seems different to our service expectations. All reminders should have the date and time of the appointment (these are automated in the system). Our appointment letters ask that patients contact us within 48 hours of a missed appointment to rebook, so that if people forget (which sometimes happens) we give them a couple of days to get back in touch and rebook with us.

In the case of cancelled appointments we would rebook with the patient when the called to cancel.

As Care Opinion stories are anonymous, I'm not able to look into the specifics of your situation to find out what happened in your case. I can only apologise that your experience did not fit with how I expect our service to function, and ask that you contact me to discuss in more detail. I would be keen to look into this further so that we can correct any issues and learn from this unfortunately situation.

You can reach me on 01375 898680 or email us at inclusionthurrock@mpft.nhs.uk.

Best wishes,

Mark Frost

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