CMHT Is this usual behaviour?

[QueenAnn]

My dh is under the care of the local Community Mental Health team. He has had a new Caseworker for the last few months and this man, I suspect, continually forgets appointments. My dh and I sit waiting for ages which causes him extreme anxiety. Yesterday, he was due at 1pm and at 2pm I phoned his office. I was put through to him immediately and he apologised and said an emergency had cropped up. He has told us this "excuse" on a few occasions now. I can appreciate that emergencies do crop up when you are dealing with people with mental health issues but surely he could have either phoned or sent me a quick email, especially as he was obviously back in the office when he was due at our house. Is this usual behaviour for a Caseworker? Should we just accept that these things happen and think ourselves lucky that we get any support at all? Do other people's Caseworkers treat appointments so casually, saying they'll come at a certain time then not turn up and not get in contact?

No, not usual, but some can be bad for it. Someone from his office can call and explain that he wont be able to make the appointment.
My CPN would occasionally cancel due to an emergency (and there were times she would have had to cancel seeing others when I was in crisis), but she always either text me, or someone from her office would let me know.
Saying that, a friend of mines son is under CMHT, and his sounds as bad as your DH's for "forgetting" appointments too.

In my CMHT we'll book home visits within a time window of approx 15-30 mins allowing for traffic and delays. If we're going to be any later or not come we ask the team secretary to phone the service user so you know and can agree if it's still ok to come/ can we come tomorrow etc. Things definitely do crop up, but it is very poor practice to just not show up after an hour and leave you guessing. This individual is bad at time management or caseload planning or communication or a mix of all! You'll be able to give anonymous feedback on their friends and family test. You can say a member of the CMHT regularly doesn't show up etc ...

Thank you both for the replies. I completely understand if someone is delayed for some reason, it could be traffic or anything and I certainly don't expect them to turn up "on the dot" I think it's more the fact that I suspect this man just completely forgets the appointment. A one off is acceptable but it's happened about 3 times recently. He also often promises to phone and then doesn't.

In my experience it is very common. The system is so bad it is fraudulent, and it makes me furious.
Staff promise to call in a few weeks and then don't; they cancel appointments at very short notice; there is a very rapid turnover of staff so continuity is barely existent; if you call their office in distress it is pot-luck whether they get back to you.
And then when you do see them, they spend most of the time getting you to fill in forms for the purposes of their byzantine bureaucracy, so you feel like the appointment is for their benefit not yours.
I have had these experiences both in relation to my own care and in relation to my son's care. It started to feel like their whole job wasn't to provide mental health care at all, but just to look as if mental health care was being provided. Just throwing money away on providing a terrible, terrible service. The most they achieved in my case was just putting an extra level o f bureaucracy between my GP and the service that did, finally, begin to provide me with treatment (after months of false starts, broken appointments etc)

Report him. That's really shit. I would bet his colleagues know he's a coaster.

This. You could report on care opinion if you want to remain anonymous. I personally would ask to speak to the clinical lead, explain the situation and ask to change your caseworker.

I'm so sorry to hear that other vulnerable people are experiencing this same poor service.

I moved house in Aug 22. I was allocated a cpn and he came out in the September and said he would see me every 2 weeks. I had a phone call say he wasn't going to be able to make it as he was off sick and he would be in touch when he was back to rearrange an appointment. I have heard since.
From September 21 to august 22 I was under a different cmht and just discharged from hospital. I couldn't be discharged from hospital until I had cpn support in place. In that year I saw 4 cpns. The first I saw once then he left. 3 months later I was assigned another one I saw her twice over a month then she left. 3 months later I saw another one who did come back after the initial appointment. 3 months later I got another one who I saw every month until I moved but each appointment followed the same pattern "what is your name? What is your diagnosis? Any suicide or psychosis symptoms?" Ok I'll see you next month

I have been under various specialist services and cmhts over the last 20 years and had good support from the specialist services and no support from the cmht. One cmht refused to have me on their books even for medication reviews because I was in employment. I was nearly discharged from another for not attending appointments. When my GP challenged them about this as she hadn't had any appointment letters either they confessed that they lost their secretary and since then appointment letters weren't being posted and often weren't being written. They were relying on telepathy for patients to realise they had appointments and the date and time of said appointments

Many years ago I experienced the same shit from a so called mental health worker. She was appalling. I did complain but she phoned me up and had a go at me and got away with it!

I have no advice other than don’t take it personally. I did at the time as I was extremely vulnerable. Shame on her.

My case worker just didn't call me on our appointment times. Then I got a new case worker and had to start right at the beginning again because she said she couldn't find my previous notes (2 years worth)
Her African accent was so strong that I couldn't understand a word she was saying. I stopped answering the phone to her in the end because if I'd asked for another case worker due to not understanding her, I'd have probably been called a racist.
I now am back to square one

Thanks for the replies, I'm reading every one of them and I'm absolutely appalled that we are all being treated so badly. Something is obviously going terribly wrong somewhere. It seems a lot of people doing these jobs are very disorganised to say the least, is it workload or do they just not care? If it's the latter then they are in the wrong job!

High case loads, poor support so good people move on and don't get replaced making conditions worse for those left. Low moral and general defeatedness reduces the care available.
It's a long term problem not just restricted to this government. I entered mental health care in 2006 and my psychiatrist didn't refer me to the cmht when I no longer qualified for adolescent care as I was about to turn 19 and he thought that the patchy care I was likely to receive wouldn't be better than no care and that support through the uni would be preferable.

CPNs do get called to emergencies or get delayed due to longer than expected visits, for the former the team secretaries should ring to advise , the latter can be more complex as it isn’t always possible to tell the base you are delayed but an apology should be sent asap, on the other side of the coin, you’d be amazed how often people aren’t in for prearranged appointments or don’t turn up at the hospital for same

I was a CPN for many years and am pleased to say that no, I don’t think this is normal or commonplace practice.