"Problems with the management"

My partner and I have had many problems with the management of this particular service. I feel that they do not listen to patients or carers. We had a problem where my partner was not allowed to involve me in his care due to Safeguarding concerns, which appeared to be based entirely on the fact that I'm a bit older than my partner. There was no evidence of harm yet the care coordinator refused to communicate with me. This turned out to be detrimental to my partner and did not respect his choices. I also don't believe that the decision fully complied with the Safeguarding Principles of which healthcare professionals are expected to follow. Fortunately my partner now has access to a private psychologist who recognised this as unhelpful and not justified, so we have evidence that this was handled badly.

Another issue was the management decided at one point to stop my partner from using email with his care coordinator. This was totally inconsiderate because my partner has a hearing problem and benefited from using this form of communication with their care coordinator. Again no consideration for anyone else but a dictatorship style of management. The decision was reversed after writing a letter to the manager.

We also had an issue with consent where the particular individual was happy on two occasions to accept email consent from my partner to share information with me, despite the policy being a signed consent form as later confirmed by a Trust director.

Another issue was that my partner was misinformed about how to register me as a carer and after complaining about this I was told that staff would be given additional training in how to do this in the future.

Due to the Trust seemingly not recognising all these failings and being fully accountable, I feel it's in the public's interest to know about our experience.