I'm normally great at attending hospital appointments for ds but I missed one, I managed to miss a letter with a date due to moving and it being sent in the two week window when I forgot to update my address with the GP/ hospital. My fault and I apologised, I feel very embarrassed for time wasting but being pregnant and stressed I'm not on the ball as usual. Obviously I've learnt from this and feel stupid already without anyone else's help.
The hospital responded by simply discharging him for missing the appointment, which I can see the logic in I guess. However I only found out a few months on when I rung to find out why I'd had no appointment for ages. The bit that concerns me is my GP/ HV were not informed of non-attendence. Were I a negligant mother and denying my son medical access he could potentially become very ill, resulting in developmental problems or worse, as is the case for children that attend this outpatient clinic. I'd expect my HV or GP to be bloody supcious and checking up in cases such as this. A child could become seriously ill because of this policy of discharging children without any checks being made.
I can easily rectify the issue in my son's case by the GP re-referring ds but it chills me to think what could happen if an abusive parent failed to care properly for a child. What's even worse is I have already been through quite a bit of HV input as DS failed to thrive as a baby and there were obviously suspisions, so had there been a check this may have flagged? (Obviously I wasn't neglecting him and the diagnosis resolved/ explained it, I think they thought I had pnd and wasn't coping. I was just very tired from no sleep and an ill/ screaming child)