Health and care
"I have a recent example. A single lady with a 50-year-old disabled child who had numerous difficulties, I’m just her friend. Even though I tried to help her as much as I could, she was struggling in terms of getting social services to give her extra support. And I'm at...read more
"In terms of more mundane interactions, I've almost given up going to the GP because it just takes so long to work."
"I, too, lost a mother to dementia six years ago now, and went through all the horrors of finding the right care home."
"My dad has been in and out of psychiatric hospital and that has been challenging, accessing appropriate care for him. Both of our parents are of an age now where they're not in care homes, but they need support. And getting that is challenging as well. I think the whole...read more
"It's about knowing what's out there and that those things are funded. Because even if you find something but it's not funded or it's got limited funds, you're going to fold early on in your search. So yes, there's lots of stuff out there, if you can find it. Signposting...read more
"Working in the homelessness sector, we have to fight to get treatments for people who are very, very ill. For mental health and addiction treatment, for general treatment or for social care. They just get missed out."
"When we got the budget I asked about further services, the social worker didn’t even know the services. I asked if maybe I could get a list of services. But no, I was just left with that."
"A lot of people that tend to care for people with disabilites like myself are not very good at doing things like form filling. They tend to think, 'Oh, this guy he's up and about. He's quite independent.' And they forget about your other needs. And when you enquire, you don't get...read more
"And if you're not tapped into the system, and you're not in the right place at the right time talking to the right person, you don't get the information that you need. That would be my biggest downside with the interactions through my parents that I've had with the NHS....read more
"I've got loads of patients where they're dealing with one thing and the next thing is falling apart. And nobody is paying attention to that because nobody joins it all together. "
"I took my brother to hospital, and he broke his knee because of football. And I was basically his next of kin. I was talking on behalf of him because he was in real pain. He waited for so long, literally five or six hours, to be seen."
"When people drop out of mental health care this shouldn't be seen as the fault of the person dropping out. It should be seen as a red flag, and the NHS should actively work towards re-engaging them."