The Shocking Failings | SPFT CAMHS Failings

The Ugly, Ugly Truth

This whole sorry saga, is about a service that fails people, but that service is made up of individuals who each have a duty to do their job correctly, stay up-to-date on knowledge about conditions they assess and to work in partnership with parents. I list below all the individuals and what each of them did and here is a link to the document that tells all the details and the terrible impact their failings had up until 2016. It's a document I had compiled, in response to a parent consultation CAMHS were doing about ASD provision. Not that it made any difference because they changed nothing and learned nothing. There's an awful lot to say and it's a sad indictment against an incompetent Trust, with a special level of incompetence when it comes to autism and ADHD.

Some of the people named below are also listed on this link, along with photos (where possible) which is the sister site about their adult service:

https://brightonnhsfailings.wixsite.com/spftfailuresexposed/single-post/2018/01/19/Other-Culprits-in-the-Saga

It is within the law for me to publish these names and photos please read this page for the disclaimer. Everything I state here is true and provable and to further evidence that all the fault is with these people, with SPFT CAMHS (in other words I don't have a persecution complex or a distorted view of reality), is here:

Dr Brenda Davis ~ senior consultant child psychologist in charge of the autism pathway for most of the South East and some of the South West of England:

failed to act appropriately when a paediatric referral was made for a severely anxious autistic 7 year old child, who had serious behavioural problems, leaving autistic parent who has another autistic child, dealing alone with the child's difficulties for three years;
oversaw and rubber-stamped the diagnostic failure of 11 year old autistic child and was responsible for her staff's failure to adhere to multiple requirements of NHS NICE Guidance CG128 during the ASD assessment (child was subsequently diagnosed NHS out-of-area);
during above ASD assessment which she oversaw, also failed to recognise her staff's failure to diagnose child's PDA and ADHD (both later diagnosed elsewhere);

took part in malicious speculative gossip about me with colleagues and falsely alleged safeguarding concerns;
following a home visit to see above child, failed to diagnose child's mental health problems or recognise suicidal ideation, when she had been traumatised by mainstream secondary school and school-refused after 3 months there, these mental health problems were concurrently diagnosed by the same out-of-area NHS hospital that diagnosed the ASD SPFT CAMHS failed to diagnose, and during the home visit, incredibly, asked her whether her vulnerable 8yo autistic sister was allowed to go out alone (clearly trying to make me appear an overbearing, controlling parent as part of their attempts to discredit and undermine me, but actually served to show up CAMHS autism ignorance further);
failed to respond to queries regarding anomalies in her report (e.g. documenting things the child never said), or to correct factual mistakes raised with her in it, just thanked me for the email!
resistance to 'labelling' - said to me "the label is for life" with much gravity, indicating resistance to diagnosis and yet conversely in the same conversation said "some children grow out of a diagnosis". Both comments are irresponsible and inappropriate and in fact, the second one is highly misleading, because someone remains autistic even when they have sufficient early intervention to 'manage' and appear to have overcome their difficulties and brain scan research has shown this https://spectrumnews.org/news/autisms-brain-signature-lingers-even-after-loss-of-diagnosis/ help is usually only forthcoming when a child is diagnosed and every person has the right to have understanding of themselves according to their neurology;
I have good reason to suspect she breached data protection law in discussing us without our knowledge or consent in a malicious safeguarding referral.

Dr Sarah James ~ child psychiatrist:

as lead clinician, after provably failing to have read the child's file before assessment, failed to diagnose 11 year old child with ASD (child subsequently diagnosed at a 2nd NHS opinion), having administered the (shortened) ADI-R parental ASD interview with me, rushed through it, constantly looking at her watch throughout, deliberately failed to read vital written evidence about our child's Asperger's behaviours that I had sent beforehand specifically for the assessment, (I found documented evidence through an SAR, in which she admitted to ignoring and simply filing it, in a tone that belittled and derided me) and despite the overall score being within clinical range for ASD, didn't diagnose her (tried instead to explain away the high scores as being due to anxiety and OCD, neither of which our child was diagnosed with, but in any case both of which are commonly co-morbid to ASD!);

Dr Tansy Walker ~ child psychologist:

after provably failing to have read the child's file beforehand, conducted the ADOS-2 part of our eldest child's autism assessment and failed to diagnose her with ASD, simply because she missed the cut-off on the ADOS by 2-3 points (but was well within clinical range on the ADI-R and I had provided them a detailed birth-to-date report on her ASD behaviours and difficulties), when all the official guidance says clinical tools are not to be relied upon in making a diagnostic decision;
relayed a totally false report to colleagues about the nature of a phone conversation I had with her regarding the same child's mental health, in order to gaslight and discredit me;
failed to recognise and diagnose the child's PDA and ADHD (later independently diagnosed);
distressed this same vulnerable autistic 11 year old child at ASD assessment, by asking her if she had a boyfriend and telling her that a cartoon character she believed in, wasn't real. Child was so distressed she refused to ever have anything further to do with CAMHS.

Dr Conny Gutjahr ~ child psychiatrist:

Bear in mind this woman only ever met me once, at a perfectly ordinary and uneventful meeting, that they requested I have with her and Brenda Davis to "facilitate the assessment process", but the real reason was that CAMHS had lost our daughter's file, during the time she was waiting to be seen for ASD assessment (which meant I had to complete a whole batch of questionnaires all over again) and she had been waiting a long time to be seen so they wanted to make it look like they were doing something, as I had been contacting them asking when she would be seen. It took them 8 months after referral to assess the child for autism, yet in the July 2013 Autism Scrutiny Panel (organised because of CAMHS failings) Brenda Davis claimed: "As the bulk of children are seen early, CAMHS do not have a waiting list. People wait no more than 2 months for an assessment (2nd line) and 4 weeks for a first assessment."

Seriously character assassinated and libelled me in emails to multiple professionals, (several of whom were elsewhere in the Trust and already maliciously discussing me, as part of the cover-up over my own Asperger's diagnosis), questioned whether I was mentally-ill and needed forcible mental health assessment (see below), simply because I sent them (very helpful) emails with important information on our child's autism difficulties in preparation for her ASD assessment (following which they failed to diagnose her, which seems to be the modus operandi for SPFT and she had to be diagnosed out-of-area)! Made petty, gossipy comments about what time of day I had sent emails and said in an email on 17.5.13: "I think that if mum is considered mentally stable or well it might be useful for us to think over the harassment issue again! If she is considered to be unwell and subsequently non compliant with further assessments of her own health, her behaviour incl. complaints could be seen as symptomatic and might fall into the realm of adult mental health & child protection/safeguarding again."
Emailed derogatory comments about me in the same email to a colleague, copied in to multiple professionals: "Mike thanks for holding up - a veritable baptism of fire!"
Lied in an email about me to disability social services saying I had declined her colleague Tansy Walker seeing our child at home, when this was never even requested;
referred to my communication style as "manic" just because I sent normal correspondence discussing resolving our autistic child's anxiety difficulties,which is their job to help with! Yet admitted in writing to not having read any of my correspondence despite this!! Referred to me as "obsessional and unrealistic" (what, for expecting CAMHS to do their job?!). Bizarrely, unprofessionally commented in an email to colleagues that the times of day of my emails indicated that I was "not sleeping much" or "must do so in the daytime"! Suggested I had a "mood disorder" and even "mania" that needed assessment or treatment and all of this, despite me having been in ongoing contact with Rebecca Simpson, (from SPFTs adult service Neurobehavioural Clinic which had previously failed to diagnose my Asperger's Syndrome and who CAMHS were in contact with behind my back in breach of data protection law!), who knew of my private Asperger's diagnosis and had a copy of the report in which it was clearly stated I had been thoroughly tested for and found to have NO personality disorder, psychiatric disorder, or mental health condition!

utterly lied on record about the nature of a phone call between myself and her colleague Dr Tansy Walker, saying that I had "cut short" the call and that the call was: "...typically controlled or curtailed by [me]" which was absolutely false (and I was horrified when I saw she had documented such a lie) and she emailed this to disability social services, to portray me as a controlling, domineering parent, lied to them that I was preventing our child being seen alone (when she herself had seen our child alone!!) and colluded with colleagues to falsely insinuate 'emotional harm' from me to our child without any cause;
wrote gossip in an email to multiple colleagues across services, about me, "I would be concerned about where she is finding time to home educate her children given the level of correspondence she is engaged in." despite her knowing zero about my educational provision - and which in fact happened to be approved and endorsed by the LA and despite knowing zero about how much time I did, or didn't spend on correspondence (it's this ignorant, speculative and malicious gossip, that you just wouldn't expect of people in these roles);
in an email on 15.4.13 falsely described me as "bombarding" CAMHS with emails (I sent CAMHS important information prior to the child's autism assessment in writing ahead of the appointment, explaining that I go blank in verbal questioning and forget important things and didn't want to hinder the assessment!) You'd think they would have appreciated this gold dust information;
on 19.11.13 sent an email to up to thirteen professionals, crowing, "we are ignoring all" and "not reading or replying" in regard to vital information from myself about our child's difficulties, discussing CAMHS support for her and totally fabricated in this email, that I possessed a "level of hostility to our services" that was claimed to be "so great" and described my polite and normal correspondence as "hostile, obsessive and intrusive communications" , absolutely lied saying about me, saying:"...has not accepted any help for [child]'s mental health in the past" and "they have refused any service for CAMHS" when I was the one who sought a referral for our child's ASD assessment and brought our child religiously to CAMHS to try to get her to engage in appointments with them;
also failed to identify that this child had PDA and ADHD or diagnose either, which were both later recognised by another (non SPFT) professional;
breached data protection law in discussing us without our knowledge or consent in a malicious safeguarding referral.

(James' husband also used to work for SPFT CAMHS and in complete contrast, when we saw him much later for a medication 2nd opinion for the same child, he seemed a really pleasant man and he recognised her needs).

Dr Di Metson ~ child psychologist (since retired and in private practice as a psychotherapist!)

we were seen for an initial appointment about a month after self-referral for ASD assessment, for what I later found out was called the "stage 1" of the ASD assessment process, during this appointment she was so rude as to aggressively shush me (who treats adults that way) when on one occasion I offered clarification after our daughter had answered a question less than clearly and I knew her answer had come across not meaning what she wanted to say (she shushed me again at another subsequent appointment, clearly not interesting in involving parents in their own child's medical appointments! What happened to politeness, respect and treating parents as equal partners in the child's care?);
told me the assessment would take place 2-3 months later, which turned out to be entirely false (it was actually another seven months until her actual assessment).
The so-called "stage 1" of the assessment (just a pointless note taking meeting with largely irrelevant questions that CAMHS seem to use to get rid of children from the ASD assessment waiting list) didn't take place until 6 months after referral and the report from that appointment took 3 months+ to be typed and was riddled with mistakes and false claims – which CAMHS did not correct when I pointed them out, e.g. she wrote that my child was isolated (the child had described social outings to her!), my name was used instead our child's name, entirely false information about my own family/parents, all of which was then carried forward as truth in all subsequent professional reports and the false claim of isolation caused many problems over the years, as it kept getting regurgitated and used against me in false accusations;
I found out she used to be a social worker, which explains why she was so very rude to me and had a parent-blame attitude:https://dimetson.wordpress.com/about/ (although this parent-blame attitude is prevalent at SPFT CAMHS anyway, as many local parents have experienced).

Peter Joyce ~ CAMHS General Manager:

In order to cover-up their diagnostic failings and discredit me to the 2nd opinion hospital, wrote a deliberately deceptive and misleading background chronology to them regarding our child's ASD assessment with his CAMHS, lying that I had refused to attend appointments with their clinicians, trying to make me appear obstructive and controlling, which was the opposite of the truth and I had communicated closely with CAMHS about all the efforts I had made to convince our child to attend (but as they'd upset her at her ASD assessment of course she wouldn't and she has PDA which they failed to identify) and lied to the hospital that I was "over-parenting" our child (apparently that's the label for a caring parent who seeks help for their child);
failed to have his staff correct factual errors in their reports and actively defended their mistakes;
allowed (and therefore condoned) his staff to behave negligently, unethically, unprofessionally and unlawfully; when multiple libellous comments about me, that were discovered in internal emails between his staff through an SAR were copied to him, failed to take any disciplinary action against them whatsoever, simply said "The issues raised will be discussed with the individuals concerned within their formal clinical supervision." Wow, that's alright then - and I don't suppose for one moment he even did that anyway.

Jim Watkins ~ counsellor (another ex-social worker!)

at the very first appointment, he started with a statement about medication not being a possibility (we hadn't raised it) without any knowledge of what she would need, or taking into account how long the child had suffered depression and anxiety (by that point around 14 months already) and that for some people, therapies are tried and don't work and medication is the only option left. It would in any case have been a last resort for us as parents, but to have a potential lifeline for our child whipped away off the bat, without him knowing the child or what would transpire, was very poor practice;
wasted a lot of time in her sessions waffling, making comments about how she had done her hair, or saying that she took pride in her appearance and asking inane and irrelevant questions about what she had been up to, undermining the severity of her depression by saying he would refer to it as "sadness", he had no clue how to engage her;
kept telling her repeatedly that he "couldn't wave any magic wand" and even that he couldn't help her;
after a few sessions, the child refused to see him again because he was making her feel worse (I would often have to comfort her, being in tears after sessions), at her penultimate session, he had brought up the issue of her ASD diagnosis despite me having told him on the phone and over email previously, that she thoroughly rejected and would not want to discuss it (such rejection of a diagnosis is a condition in itself, called anosognosia - it took her over 5 years to accept that she is autistic). He was repeatedly probing her about it, making her angry and upset, after which she just hung her head and cried. He then simply ended the session (early) without trying to rectify the distress he caused her and this just upset her even more, he packed his papers into his bag and left her wailing, with me left to deal with this fallout alone;
he had said he would talk with colleagues about what the plan for her therapy would be, after another session where she had just sat with her head down, non-verbal, crying for most of the session, because she felt he wasn't helping her. She had hung on until the next session therefore, hoping for a positive action or remedy after his meeting. However, the only suggestion he came forth with from colleagues was for me to take her for outings (which he already knew that I did) leaving her yet again, massively disappointed and feeling hopeless. So she refused to see him again.

Dr Judith Jarrett ~ psychologist (previously in adult mental health, then transferred to CAMHS):

failed to recognise my own Asperger's when I saw her in adult services and was very resistant to referring me for an assessment;

tried to explain away my typically autistic spiky profile on the tests she did;
was clearly inexperienced in her job (made a comment in a report about her having anxiety during my sessions with her!);
said I couldn't have Asperger's for this bizarre reason:

Judith Jarrett reason I don't have Asper

when next encountering her at CAMHS where she was working years later, she failed to engage our child for mental health support over the best part of a year, or to recognise that she had PDA and ADHD (even though she was aware of the existing ASD diagnosis) the child started telling Dr Jarrett that she wasn't helping her, on a regular basis in the end. I had way more understanding of and insight on her than Dr Jarrett and over time, Dr Jarrett began complaining about her ego being dented by being told by our daughter she wasn't helping her;
at our child's final appointment with her, she was sarcastic and rude to me (because we arrived slightly late, which we explained and apologised for), but I then found out a couple of months later, she had also been at the time, joining in bad-mouthing me in the professional network, which explained why, even though she knew me from both adult and child services, as our child had asked me to attend all her mental health appointments with her, so she knew I was a very good parent and not a risk of any sort to anyone.

Dr Nimet Key ~ child psychiatrist

11yo autistic child who was on medication for mental health and couldn't cope in mainstream, had been allowed by her primary school autism unit, to withdraw from distressing lesson content that she could not cope with (it gave her panic attacks, severe anxiety, meltdowns and nightmares), an issue arose with her intended secondary school before term started, with them saying she could withdraw and then changing their mind. They wanted a medical practitioner's letter saying she needed this and then they would allow her, so we requested this letter from Dr Key. Dr Key who was seeing the child for medication review appointments, refused to write the letter, despite knowing the child was school-refusing unless they allowed withdrawal and that I was being put to inordinate stress dealing with a recalcitrant school.
Dr Key said she'd need a "team meeting" to discuss writing the letter! When we saw her next and asked what the outcome of her "team meeting" was, she said she needed another "team meeting" to discuss it! She ended by suggesting in her report, that if our daughter showed signs of distress she could come out of class for "a short while" completely ignoring the severe impact on the child. This was a totally inappropriate suggestion, as no matter how distressed she was, the child masked completely in school (which had been documented in her most recent CAMHS assessment reports as the school and child had reported that she masked – more evidence of her file not being read) and once she had been forced to be exposed to distressing material the damage would already be done;
lied in a report to social services saying I had been pushing her to write the above letter and breached data protection law in discussing us without our consent in the first place.

Dr Paula Jenkins ~ child psychiatrist

teenaged autistic child who had been suffering with diagnosed mental ill-health for two years, no therapy had helped, saw her for an appointment specifically about medication, she spent the whole appointment minimising the severity of our daughter's depression.
ended session by saying child was only "mildly" depressed and she would not prescribe. This left our daughter absolutely devastated as she had been hanging on desperately for something to finally help her, having been off school for a long time due to school trauma and in receipt of LA home tuition on medical grounds.
I had to insist on a second opinion (additional stress I could have very much done without - they make you battle for absolutely everything your child needs), at which she was finally prescribed medication. Would the next psychiatrist have prescribed if it was not clear it was needed?

Dr Francesca Scanlon ~ child psychiatrist

Following me requesting a GP referral to a specialist clinic (Elizabeth Newson Centre) with expertise in pathological demand avoidance (PDA), the GP said she had to refer to CAMHS as she was unable to refer direct. So the CAMHS referral was made and they considered the request at their commissioning panel - and declined the referral, despite the fact that there was no local expertise in PDA and SPFT were denying PDA even exists. They said they would ask the paediatrician at another service for "input" (even though they admitted in a letter it wasn't his area of expertise), even though these paediatricians were not experts in any ASD letalone PDA and hadn't seen the child for two and a half years which was for an assessment, when her autism was diagnosed at that service. They ought to have identified her PDA at that time, but hadn't. CAMHS had wrongly said that the child was under the care of the other service and were avoiding answering specific questions, such as whether an IFR (individual funding request) was submitted for the referral request, despite repeated asking (I had even downloaded an IFR form and partially completed it, sent it to head of CAMHS and asked for a competent clinician to complete it and submit it if one hadn't been). I pointed out that it was not only a waste of the other service's professional time, but they had absolutely no PDA expertise (which was the whole point of the referral request to the experts!) and I had submitted two private professional supporting pieces of evidence, including two clinical, which they were completely disregarding. So I had to appeal to the next commissioning panel. As a result of all this, they decided instead to keep it in-house (clearly to save money), and asked their Chalkhill Hospital clinician, Francesca Scanlon to do a PDA assessment. What a mistake that was.

failed to diagnose 10 year old autistic child's PDA and ADHD, despite writing in the assessment report that the child had demand avoidant behaviours;
documented in the above report that the school didn't see any PDA behaviours whilst in another part of the report, she wrote about avoidant behaviours that the school reported the child did at school;
had told me that she had contributed to the development of the EDAQ (extreme demand avoidance questionnaire) used for screening children for PDA and still couldn't recognise a child with PDA!
failed to diagnose above child's ADHD (which was CAMHS' second chance at doing so) allowing her OT colleague to wrongly say it was part of child's SPD;
I had provided her detailed accounts of both PDA and ADHD behaviours in report form, including research on how girls with ADHD present, but she ignored all my evidence;
contributed to a provably malicious and unlawful safeguarding referral, despite that she hadn't even seen anyone in our family for a long time and breached data protection law in discussing us without our consent in the first place;
child's next school noticed PDA behaviours and could clearly see the child had PDA.
The hilarious thing is, that she documented that I am diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome in her report, yet she works for the same Trust that refuses to acknowledge my diagnosis!!

Keli Horne ~ occupational therapist

wrongly attributed child's ADHD traits (of which there were multiple very clear signs) as being due to sensory processing disorder (which the child also has) which contributed to the diagnostic failure meaning that the child has currently reached the age of 15 years old and is still without an ADHD diagnosis and therefore receives no recognition or support for it - whilst parent and sibling have both been diagnosed (NHS) with ADHD and it runs in families!
our female child's report was copy and pasted from someone else's, as in several parts it said "he" and "his";
wrote recommendations that were totally inappropriate for a child with sensory sensitivity and hypermobility;

Dr Birpal Chopra ~ child psychiatrist

in 2014, having requested CAMHS assess our autistic child for ADHD which she clearly had, we were sent a CONNERS form to complete. We completed and returned it and awaited a date for the assessment - a letter arrived, telling us, without the child having been seen, that we would be "pleased to know [our child] doesn't have ADHD", he had relied on the school's form and dismissed ours, clearly being clueless about masking - but to make a diagnostic decision without seeing the child or speaking to the parent(s) is appalling;
I emailed Dr Chopra direct, and asked him if CAMHS had awareness of female ADHD presentation and masking, giving him some links about it, and about under-diagnosis of females with ADHD and stating more about her ADHD behaviours - he never even replied;
10yo autistic child with severe anxiety, that had been assessed by the above two colleagues and stated in the psychiatric report of the assessment, conducted between October 2014 and January 2015, should be prescribed anxiety medication, but it took until 22.3.15 for Dr Chopra to prescribe it, a whole ten weeks after the report was issued (5 months after the assessment started), knowing that the child had severe anxiety and associated serious behavioural problems affecting the whole family and we had been waiting for help for her;
in the end, I told them I was coming to CAMHS (uninvited) to wait in reception for the prescription and I did, he was the duty psychiatrist, he refused to prescribe, refused to even come out and talk to me, sending Jim Watkins backwards and forwards like a lackey, with no explanation as to why he wouldn't prescribe it and knowing our daughter was desperate - I had sat there waiting for an hour and a half with her, I left Dr Chopra a letter telling him he had failed our daughter and I found his behaviour rude and cowardly;
only because I had done the above, did they finally prescribe it the next day. Peter Joyce the general manager called me to come and collect the prescription, he was there with Dr Chopra, who told me my letter was 'rude' (me being autistic, it was straight to the point and honest it wasn't rude - and highly understandable given the circumstances, CAMHS and he personally, had left us in) in an act of active disability discrimination against an autistic person. Peter Joyce had implied the prescription was ready to collect and I would need five minutes, they deliberately dragged it out for more than half an hour, the prescription wasn't even written out, it was clearly about Dr Chopra getting the opportunity to call me rude and try to make me feel uncomfortable, before finally going to write the prescription.

NB I have recently contacted CAMHS and requested that an experienced clinician that knows about ADHD in girls, reviews her file and corrects the failure to diagnose, especially in view of her sibling and parent having ADHD, because this puts her at very high risk of ADHD as it runs in families and already, being autistic she already has up to 80% chance of having it. I am awaiting this as we speak.

So to summarise (aside from therapy and prescription failings, parent-blame and serious data protection breaches): CAMHS have failed our children a combined total of seven diagnoses (ASD, PDA, ADHD, depression and anxiety disorder for one child and PDA and ADHD for the other child). Add that to SPFTs adult service failing to diagnose my Asperger's, SPD* and ADHD and that comes to ten diagnoses. Plus I know the eldest child also has SPD (with both myself and her sibling diagnosed with this also, I know what it looks like!) so I ought to add that on because they didn't diagnose that either, so bravo SPFT you failed to diagnose eleven conditions for my family!

*Occupational therapy input is supposed to be part of an ASD assessment and an OT would diagnose SPD: https://www.cot.co.uk/areas-practice/nice-autism-guidelines-guarantees-ot-input-assessment-and-diagnosis-pathways

Further SPFT Failings on 21.4.15

Our early teens autistic daughter was in a terrible state and attempting dangerous behaviour to herself and other family members. I tried countless times calling SPFTs Sussex Mental Health Line (their out-of-hours number for mental health crises) and it was constantly engaged, and then went to a voicemail saying "all our advisers are busy" and suggesting calling Samaritans. Luckily we had another person there (who was having to restrain our daughter from harm), but at the time we needed help (we had only been given that number a couple of days before by CAMHS and it was the first time I had called it) I was unable to get through. Bear in mind this was only the following month after Dr Chopra's failings above.

More recently:

In June 2019, when our eldest child was 17 years old, she went into a mental health crisis and needed to be taken to A&E. They said her case was urgent and they gave her some temporary medication, recording that she needed medication to be prescribed. She had been self-harming and CAMHS refused to accept her referral. They said she should go to adult services instead and even told me they have no facility for urgent cases!! The CCGs "Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Local Transformation Plan for Brighton and Hove (2015-2020)" says CAMHS must take children and young people up to 25yo (see below), when they are the service that has the case history, but they refused nonetheless and she was still the actual age for CAMHS, being not yet an adult anyway (and being autistic, emotionally and socially very young for her age, so not ready for adult services anyway). The CCG also states in CYP plan that urgent cases are seen within four hours! We were shunted to the Wellbeing Service which was not appropriate for her case, as they are for mild to moderate cases as stated by their website and they cannot prescribe medication, which A&E said she needed. "No door is the wrong door"? What a joke!

So even though it was four years into this five year plan, when I spoke to the CCG they said it wasn't set up yet! What on earth have SPFT's CAMHS been doing all that time?! Clearly not caring about the health and wellbeing of vulnerable children. The Wellbeing Service told us to contact the adult Mental Health Rapid Response Service, who also refused to take her, because she wasn't 18 years old and therefore not an adult. I spent hours on the phone unable to move whilst I tried desperately to get her help, I spent the best part of a day in my PJs on the phone back and forth with all these organisations. As a result, CAMHS left a self-harming vulnerable autistic 17yo who was banging her head on the hard tiled floor, picking her face and hands until they bled and threatening suicide and in the end adult services accepted her referral (she was still only 17yo so should have been with CAMHS), but made her wait 1.5 weeks for appointment and over 2 weeks for medication. Read my Twitter thread here: https://twitter.com/MyAspieJustice/status/1143956767149346816 as it has screenshots from the relevant websites proving they were refusing to do what they were supposed to.

"Sussex Partnership NHS Trust

C.A.M.H.S. Exposed"

The truth and facts about how an NHS Trust committed staggering diagnostic negligence and wilful acts of harm against two autistic children and their autistic parent - and then covered it up with lies.

The Ugly, Ugly Truth