Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

3. Miss A complains about the lack of support and treatment for her daughter, Miss T, by the Trusts. This is in respect of CAMHS and the residential facility (a facility where young people reside whilst assessment takes place).

4. Miss A says CAMHS has not investigated Miss T’s symptoms properly or quickly enough and this has led to misdiagnosis. She has needed to seek help in the private sector where a consultant diagnosed Miss T as having paediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcus (PANDAS).

5. Miss A says the residential facility has not made reasonable adjustments for Miss T’s individual issues, and it has not accepted her for treatment. She says it has treated Miss ‘unfavourably’ because of this.

6. Miss A says the issues have resulted in:

• Miss T missing 18 months education which she cannot catch up • Miss T’s mental health has suffered, and she has self-harmed and talked of wanting to die • Miss T has physically harmed Miss A and her partner • Miss T Needs full time care and Miss A’s partner has needed to give up work to provide this, which has reduced household income • the need to provide care has impacted Miss A and she is unable to pursue career enhancement, affecting earning potential • the family has needed to move home to enable a better care environment which has increased household costs • Miss A has accrued debt to pay for private medical costs • the delay in diagnosis may have prevented a better long-term outcome for Miss T as early diagnosis and treatment can result in complete recovery • the whole family has experienced stress, anxiety and exhaustion.

7. The outcomes Miss A is seeking are:

• the UK Government to formally accept PANDAS as syndromes, providing training to the NHS to enable treatment to be given • the residential facility to change its acceptance criteria to enable Miss T to be accepted into its care for diagnosis • financial compensation of £18000, the same amount that had been allocated to pay for Miss T’s care at the residential facility, to cover the costs incurred by the family.

8. Miss A brought the complaint to us in August 2022, and we closed this as a legal route was potentially available, but Miss A had not explored this. As the Health Service Commissioner’s Act, 1993, (the Law) says we should not accept a case where the legal route is potentially available, we closed the case and asked Miss A to try this route first.

9. Miss A came back to us as she was unable to secure help to pursue the legal route.

10. On looking at the complaint and speaking with the Trusts, we found the local resolution process had not been completed. They asked to be given the opportunity to resolve the issues with Miss A before we started to look at the complaint.

11. The Law says an organisation should have the opportunity to complete its local resolution process before we look at a complaint. As the Trusts said they had not completed their local processes and asked for the opportunity to do so, we closed the complaint as not ready for us.

12. The letter advising Miss A of this explained if she remained dissatisfied once she had the Trusts’ final responses, she was able to return to us. We also referred to our time limits.

13. Miss A sent a copy of the final response about the issues with CAMHS in December 2023.

14. The final response in respect of the issues about residential facility was sent to Miss A in March 2024. She sent this to us in August 2025 and asked we reopened her complaint.

17. The Law, section 9(4) says we cannot investigate complaints brought more than one year after the time the complainant was aware of having reason to complain, unless we consider there is a good reason to do so.

18. We have discussed this with Miss A to understand why she was unable to pursue her complaint earlier.

19. Miss A complains the Trusts did not investigate or diagnose Miss T’s symptoms quickly or thoroughly enough. This led to misdiagnosis and her not receiving the correct treatment. In addition, she says CAMHS referred Miss T to a residential facility, but this did not accept her as it could not cater for her behavioural needs.

20. On her complaint form, Miss A says she was aware of having reason for complaint in March 2022. She raised her complaint with both Trusts at this time, bringing this to our service at the end of August 2022. This was within our timescale for consideration.

21. Miss A had the potential to follow the legal route, and her primary outcome was financial (reimbursement of costs for private assessment due to clinical negligence). Therefore, we asked she pursue this route in line with the requirements of the Law, whereby all other options for resolution should be considered before the complaint comes to us.

22. As solicitors did not accept Miss A’s complaint, we reopened the case.

23. We found she had not given the Trusts the opportunity to complete their local resolution processes as both had asked that she go back to them if she remained unhappy with their initial responses. She had not done so, and we asked she go back to the Trusts to give them the chance to resolve her concerns.

24. Miss A provided a copy of the final response from CAMHS in December 2023. We asked whether she wanted us to look at this independently of the complaint with the other Trust or, as the issues were linked, whether she wanted to wait for the other final response before going forwards.

25. We did not receive a response to this email until August 2025, when Miss A sent us a copy of second Trusts final response. She had received this in March 2024.

26. This meant her complaint was made to us three years and five months after the date of her being aware of having reason to complain, and two years and five months outside of our time limit.

27. We made allowance for the delays caused by our service referring her to follow the legal route then again asking her to go back to the Trusts to enable completion of the local resolution processes. This resulted in her complaint being one year and five months out of time.

28. In her email, Miss A explained a lot had happened since she originally contacted us. She said she had needed to raise a complaint about a third organisation and wanted to link that with her original complaint. She had been waiting for the final response for the third complaint but had not received this, so she had decided to move forwards with her original complaint.

29. During a conversation with Miss A, we discussed her reasons for the delay in coming back to us as she was now outside of our time limit. She referred to a lack of time to pursue the complaint and that we had said she should wait for the final response from the third organisation before coming back to us.

30. We explained our records and her timeline do not support her view about the third organisation. We emailed her in December 2023 after she sent a copy of the final response from CAMHS. We said we were able to wait for the final response in respect of the residential facility due to the link to the CAMHS complaint but if Miss A did not want to wait, we could consider the CAMHS issues in isolation. Miss A did not respond to this email.

31. This was our last communication with Miss A until she sent the residential facility’s final response to us in August 2025. We had been unaware of her complaint about the third organisation as her timeline shows she did not raise this until a few days before receiving the final response of March 2024.

32. From the timeline of events Miss A has provided, we can see she has been actively pursuing her complaint with the third organisation since March 2024.

33. There is nothing to show Miss A contacted us after receiving the final response of March 2024 until her email of August 2025.

34. We consider that as she has been able to pursue the complaint about the third organisation, it is reasonable to have expected her to send us the final response she received in March 2024 and to ask whether we could her include her new complaint as part of the same case.

35. We do not consider she has provided strong enough reasons for not doing this. As she received the final response more than one year and five months before coming back to us, this is outside our time limit, and we will not be looking further at this complaint.

36. We realise this is not the outcome Miss A is looking for. Our decision is not intended to detract from the extreme pressure and stress Miss T’s condition continues to place on Miss A and her family. We recognise this has been lifechanging for them and that this continues to be the case.

1. We have considered Miss A’s complaint raised on behalf of her daughter, Miss T, about Childhood and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and a residential facility, part of ​​Solent NHS Trust University Hospital Southampton and NHS Foundation Trust​ (the Trusts). We are sorry to hear of the circumstances leading to this complaint and the impact looking after Miss T has had on the family.

2. After careful consideration, we have decided the complaint falls outside of our time limit and that there is no good reason for us to put our time limit aside to consider this further.