Ombudsman help!

[seekingERPnorthwest]

Hi, has anyone else had experience of taking a case to the health ombudsman? I sent mine 5 weeks ago - they've a 6 week delay just to allocate a caseworker.

[seekingERPnorthwest]

Hi, I'm still having a lot of stress with the Ombudsman.  If anyone can help me with moral support it would be fantastic.

I sent my case to the Ombudsman on Monday 30th April this year.  I was told there was a 6 week delay in allocating cases to caseworkers.  In fact it took 8 weeks, 2 days to do this.  The caseworker told me he'd call me today (a whole month later) with an update.

I hadn't heard from him by 3.15 so I called him.  He said he had a reminder on Outlook to call me.  (But he hadn't called me .. ... ).  The update is basically that he has done nothing.  Today he said that they normally request documents from the NHS Trust you are complaining about, so he did that today.  He said there was no answer on the phone so he would email them.  Now he is going on annual leave for 2 weeks.  He also asked me lots of questions which I'd already answered on the form of 30th April so it feels like we are just going round in circles.

It's so frustrating that it's their usual procedure to request documents from the Trust to progress the case, but they waited 3 months before they got round to doing this.  If he had requested the papers earlier then he would have them by now.  The outcome is that I just have to keep waiting longer and longer and longer.  It's so pointless having an Ombudsman which is supposed to help me with NHS problems when the Ombudsman itself has so many problems it can't deal with them.  I'm so fed up.

[Ashley]

We filed a complaint against an IAPT service which we reported about in our magazine last year.  That case took months, and to the point I had pretty much given up on it until they got in touch one day.

The Ombudsman will investigate I am sure, but like many services (myself included) sometimes it does take time because of not enough resources for the demand on the service. 

Whilst that doesn't help you, I just wanted to share the fact the only time we have complained it took a long time, although in that case partly because there was so much paperwork involved between all parties, much of which I had created with the services myself prior to going to the Ombudsman.

[seekingERPnorthwest]

Thanks, Ashley, I'm so grateful for the reply and it's really helpful that there's someone out there who knows what I'm going through

[seekingERPnorthwest]

i.e. my blood is boiling