"Formal complaint to follow"

I have three complaints about the trust.

1.) 3 years ago my son was discharged from a section 3 without himself or us being told that he had a definite diagnosis. It was our first experience of the mental health system, so we thought that he had experienced a one- off psychosis. About a year later I accidentally found out that he had been discharged with a formal diagnosis of a very serious long term mental illness. His care coordinator at the early intervention team didn't know that he had been given this diagnosis either. Our son was extremely shocked when he was told his diagnosis. We decided not to pursue a complaint at the time because we all wanted to get on with our lives and be positive about the future.

2.) 10 days ago my son was sectioned for the third time by the crisis team. They briefly left him alone standing on a public street with his rucksack on his back waiting for the secure ambulance to arrive. He absconded and spent 6 hours in the pouring rain and the dark, frightened and alone. He was picked up by the police at midnight on the coastal road. Because he was classed as a missing person his face, name and the section details were plastered all over social media. This helped to find him, but he will have to come to terms with all his friends and neighbours knowing he has been sectioned.

3.) my son appealed this latest section and the tribunal took place this morning. Yesterday a social worker who we had never met rang my husband for background details, as they would be giving information at the tribunal. Because our son was staying in a hospital not in his home town ( because that was full) they said that they did not have all his notes. Yet I had been told by the ward staff that all notes could easily been transferred between hospitals because it was the same trust. Our son won his appeal despite having a diagnosis of a very serious long term illness, after not being on his meds, after being sectioned for a third time in three years and after absconding with no plan of where or how he was going to care for himself. His care coordinator on the ward said it was unfortunate and that them self and all the staff on the ward thought that our son should have been kept under section. As the people who have spent the most time with our son recently, we believe that he needed to be kept on a section.

I am an extremely patient person, but a parent can only take so much. We need help caring for our son. You have badly let us down for the third time. We will be pursueing this formally.