Croydon Health Services NHS Trust

4. Ms G complains the Trust failed to recognise the severity of B’s illness when she brought him to the Emergency Department (ED) on 23 January 2021. Ms G says the Trust took too long to provide B treatment and to escalate his care to a consultant. She says the Trust did not listen to her when she raised concerns that B could be suffering from sepsis.

5. Ms G says she feels deeply traumatised and frustrated by the events. She says she had to take an extended amount of time off work and finds the memories of the standard of care B received highly distressing.

6. Ms G would like the Trust to make service improvements.

7. On 22 January 2021, Ms G brought B to the Trust’s ED as he was suffering from a high temperature, vomiting, and stomach cramps. A doctor diagnosed B with a bacterial infection.

8. Unfortunately, B was still very unwell by the following day, and Ms G brought him back to the ED. She described to us how his face and parts of his body were extremely swollen. On 24 January, B was diagnosed with a serious complication of COVID-19.

9. B was transferred to an intensive care unit where he remained for one week. Ms G told us today B is much better, although it took him a year to fully recover.

10. Ms G complained to the Trust on 21 March 2021, and it responded on 28 May 2021. She approached us on 5 June 2021 and explained she had outstanding concerns about the Trust’s investigation. We advised Ms G to return to the Trust. The Trust responded on 14 September 2021.

11. Ms G approached us with her full complaint on 21 February 2024.

14. The law says a person needs to make their complaint to us within a year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to us after one year, unless we consider there is a good reason to do so.

15. We have discussed this with Ms G to understand the reasons she could not bring her complaint to us sooner. We have also considered the time the Trust took to respond to Ms G.

16. To establish whether a complaint has come to us outside our time limit, we first consider when the person became aware of the issues complained about. We can see Ms G was unhappy with the care the Trust provided B at the time of the events. She therefore became aware she had reason to complain on 24 January 2021, and her complaint went outside of our time limit on 24 January 2022.

17. Having looked at the overall timeline, we can see just over two years have passed between 24 January 2022, when Ms G’s complaint went outside our time limit, and 21 February 2024, when she approached us with her full complaint. We have considered what happened during this gap and whether Ms G was prevented from bringing her complaint to us sooner.

18. As we have seen, Ms G first brought her complaint to us in June 2021 after she received the Trust’s first response. She told us she had some outstanding concerns and we advised her to return to the Trust to give it the opportunity to resolve these. We explained that if Ms G remained unhappy, she could return to us. There is no indication from our records that we advised Ms G we would start looking at her complaint in the meantime.

19. Ms G contacted us on 4 August 2021 to let us know she had not yet received a response from the Trust. We advised that NHS Complaint Regulations allow a period of six months for NHS organisations to respond to a complaint.

20. The Trust sent Ms G its final response on 14 September. We can see no evidence she sent this to us at the time. Ms G told us she could not remember if she had emailed it to us. Ms G explained that she also approached the Care Quality Commission (CQC) with her complaint around this time and we can understand that it would have been easy to lose track of what stage her complaint was at with each organisation, particularly considering she had already made contact with us.

21. Ms G next contacted us on 21 February 2024. She explained she thought we were already looking at her complaint but was concerned she had not heard from us since she contacted us in 2021. Ms G told us she thought this delay might be related to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on our service.

22. We stopped accepting new health complaints between 26 March and 30 June 2020 to avoid putting additional pressure on the NHS during a national emergency. At all other times we have accepted complaints.

23. In February 2021 our website said our service remained open but there may be delays in considering complaints. We asked people not to submit a complaint to us if it was about delays in complaint handling, matters likely to resolve themselves within the next few weeks or months, or delays in service delivery which were due to organisations coping with COVID-19. These exclusions do not apply to Ms G’s complaint which is why we advised her in June 2021 to return to us if she remained unhappy the Trust’s response.

24. Having considered Ms G’s explanation and the records of our correspondence with her, we do not consider two years a reasonable amount of time for her to have waited before she contacted us again. While we appreciate Ms G did not intend to cause this delay, we cannot see there was anything preventing her from contacting our helpline after she received the Trust’s final response in September 2021. If she had, we would have clarified our position and given her details of what we needed. Our contact details are available on our website and were included at the end of the Trust’s two letters.

25. We fully empathise with how Ms G has been affected by B’s sudden and severe illness. We can see how much work she has put into sharing her concerns. Our decision is not intended in any way to diminish this or her experience. It is important we consider and act within the law and we hope our statement clearly explains the reason why we cannot consider the complaint further.

1. We have carefully considered Ms G’s complaint about Croydon Health Services NHS Trust (the Trust). We were sincerely sorry to hear the distressing circumstances of her complaint and how deeply she has been affected.

2. We have seen Ms G’s complaint falls outside of our time limit by just over two years. Having carefully considered why Ms G did not bring the complaint to us sooner, we have decided we have not seen good reason to put our time limit aside. This means we cannot consider Ms G’s complaint further.

3. We thank Ms G for the effort she has gone to in bringing us her complaint. We recognise our decision not to take further action may be disappointing. We wish Ms G and her son, B, the best for the future.