South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

4. Miss A complains about the care and treatment she received from the Trust between 2019 and 2021. She says the Trust: • did not share important information about the change to her PTSD diagnosis with her • did not provide a draft care plan and written response as agreed in her CPA meeting in November 2019 • communicated with her poorly and were dismissive of her concerns during 2019 to 2021 • failed to consider evidence from her advocate which showed her records from an appointment in May 2021 were inaccurate • continued to involve staff in her care she had asked it to exclude in November 2020 • discharged her without appropriate support in June 2021.

5. She believes these events caused her significant distress and worsened her mental health. She says the experience left her anxious, mistrustful, and without the mental health support she needed.

6. As an outcome of her complaint Miss A would like an independent review of her concerns, clear explanations for what happened, support with a second opinion and ongoing care, her views added to her records, a review of her discharge, longer-term support, and recognition of the distress the process caused.

7. Miss A has been under mental health services for over 30 years. In November 2019, she attended a Care Programme Approach (CPA) meeting with her care coordinator and her advocate, where an agreed agenda was discussed. She says it was agreed the Trust would provide a written response to this agenda, but despite chasing this, she did not receive one.

8. In 2021, when she accessed her medical records, she discovered that her PTSD diagnosis had been removed several years earlier without her knowledge. She continued to raise concerns about her care from 2019 onwards. Her advocate attended an appointment in May 2021 and produced notes that differed from the clinical record, but she says the Trust did not contact the advocate or take this evidence into account. She was discharged in May/June 2021 without what she felt was an adequate care plan or support.

9. She made a formal complaint to the Trust in October 2021, and the Trust issued its final response in April 2024. She brought her complaint to us in December 2024.

11. 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. We have discussed this with Miss A to understand the reasons why she could not do so. We have also considered the time the Trust took to respond to Miss A’s complaint.

12. Miss A complains about issues with her care and treatment by the Trust that occurred between November 2019 and June 2021 when she was discharged. She was aware of most of the issues that she complains about by June 2021 as at this stage she has still not received the care plan and was discharged without the support she felt she required.

13. In September 2021 she obtained her medical records and became aware that her PTSD diagnosis had been removed. Therefore, at this stage Miss A was aware of all of the issues that she is complaining about.

14. If we take September 2021 as the latest date of knowledge for all of her issues, to be within our time limit, Miss A needed to have complained to us within a year of this, so by September 2022.

15. Miss A brought her complaint to us in December 2024, so her complaint is out of time by 2 years and 3 months.

16. We have considered the reasons why there was a delay in Miss A bringing her complaint to us.

17. Miss A made a formal complaint to the Trust about all of these matters on 15 October 2021. The Trust provided her with a final response on 10 April 2024. Therefore, local resolution took a long time to conclude.

18. We have considered the reasons for this. It appears that there were initially delays in the Trust’s complaint handling because of the COVID-19 pandemic which led to a delay in an investigator being assigned. It is unclear when the investigator was assigned but we can see that there was at least a 5-month delay caused by this.

19. Following this, the Trust attempted to agree the complaint issues with Miss A and her advocate, but in July 2022 Miss A asked for the complaint to be paused until she had written an impact statement. She then asked for the complaint to be paused indefinitely in October 2022 as she said she was unwell.

20. Miss A recontacted the Trust in December 2023 to ask for the complaint to be restarted. At this stage, the Trust agreed the complaint issues with Miss A in January 2024 and provided its written response in April 2024.

21. Therefore, we can see that local resolution took a long time to conclude, but we can only attribute a maximum of 12 months of that delay to the Trust. The rest of the delay was caused by Miss A asking for the complaint to be paused.

22. We asked Miss A for the reasons why she could not pursue her complaint during this period, and why there was a delay of 8 months in bringing her complaint to us once she had received the final response from the Trust.

23. She told us that she has serious mental health problems, lives alone and has no close family support. She said that she had several different advocates, some of whom she felt were not helpful or did not receive all of her letters. She also said she had other health problems and needed to take breaks from the process.

24. We have carefully considered these explanations. We accept that her health problems and the changes in advocacy support made it harder for her to move her complaint forward quickly. We accept that this would have meant that is took longer for her to deal with the complaint, and we accept that this would account for some of the delay.

25. Miss A asked the Trust to pause the complaint for a period of 14 months. We appreciate that she says she was unwell during this time, but this is a significant period of time to delay the complaint. Also, Miss A had support from advocacy services during this time. Whilst she says some of these were unhelpful, we can see that some of these contacted the Trust on her behalf, so she was receiving appropriate support during some of this period.

26. We consider that even if she didn’t feel able to pursue the complaint herself at times when she was feeling unwell, she could have let her advocate pursue this for her.

27. The Trust’s final response in April 2024 signposted Miss A to us, however, she took 8 months to bring her complaint to us. This again is a significant period of time when she was aware of us and could have contacted us earlier.

28. We appreciate that the complaints process can be difficult, and that Miss A may have needed a break before submitting her complaint to us. We consider 8 months is a significant period not to pursue the complaint when she was aware she was still unhappy with the response. We consider Miss A could have come to us earlier.

29. We have seen no strong reason to set aside our time limit on this complaint. Having carefully considered Miss A’s explanations for not complaining sooner, we do not consider there are sufficient grounds to exercise discretion here. For this reason, we will be taking no further action.

30. While we are unable to take further action, we do not wish to diminish Miss A’s experience and recognise this had a big impact on her life. We thank Miss A for bringing this complaint to us and wish her well for the future.

1. We have carefully considered Miss A’s complaint about South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust).

2. Her complaint falls outside of our 12-month time limit, and we have decided there is no good reason for us to put the time limit aside to consider it further.

3. We recognise how difficult these events and the long complaints process have been for her, and we do not make this decision lightly. However, the evidence shows she knew about the issues several years before bringing her complaint to us, and the reasons she has given do not justify the length of the delay.