“It’s just not joined up” [AUDIO]
“What I can see is there is a huge number of agencies. There is a huge amount of charitable concern. There is a huge amount of goodwill amongst the public to help people. It is just not joined up. And so people fall through the gaps. And one service I will mention, and it came to me when I just thought I just do not know where to turn now….you know, you might have Gynaecology in one place, and then it closes down because some other service is running there tomorrow. And so the phones ring and no one’s answering part of it was how it was setting up. And I was actually driven to distraction where I couldn’t get hold of this department because it just didn’t appear to exist until the following week. And Patient Liason service came to my rescue. I said how do they expect me to deal with all of this when I cannot get the phone to be picked up? And she said something. She said, you know, I have been there myself. She said, I know how you feel. You have to power through. That is how you get it. And that’s exactly what I did. And I don’t know who that lady was but I’ve always been indebted to her because she said you can do this, you just power through. Some people can’t. You know, they just don’t have the resources. And it was the gaps, it was the gaps that were the problem.”