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Care Opinion

Refusal of providing care

Posted By apusff64

"Refusal of providing care"

About: MHERL - Mental Health Emergency Response Line

(as the patient),

Called my community mental health team and they were unable to get anyone to take my crisis call despite that being part of their service. I rang MHERL, desperate in crisis and in emergency. They told me to contact my community team. I said I had and that they weren’t able to help me. MHERL said they couldn’t help and I had to ring the community team. I was in crisis. I was not ok.

This is not the first time this exact thing has happened where my coordinator was away, community refused to find someone to help me and MHERL denied me access to their service despite it being an emergency. Disgusting. Traumatic. Doesn’t make me feel safe or able to trust anyone. It’s so hard to ask for help and if I’m asking an emergency provider (who I have phobias of because of past adverse experiences plus the added situation that was identical to this), it is an emergency. 

Thank you for increasing my distrust in the system, in those supposed to be helpful and mental health trained, thank you for increasing my distress infinitely and making me feel even more isolated, hopeless and scared. 

This is not ok! If a community team is saying no one is able to take my call and it’s not possible for them to even call me back when someone/anyone becomes available, other services such as MHERL NEED to be accessible. 

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Responses

Response from Ben Noteboom, Executive Director, Royal Perth Bentley Group 2 months ago
Ben Noteboom
Executive Director,
Royal Perth Bentley Group

Submitted on 30/01/2025 at 12:23 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 1:20 PM

picture of Ben Noteboom

Dear apusff64

I was very disappointed to read of your experience and I sincerely apologise for the distress it caused you during a time when you needed help.

While the Mental Health Emergency Response Line (MHERL) does not provide face to face support, once they understood that you had already attempted (unsuccessfully) to contact the Community Mental Health Service, I would expect them to have provided you with guidance on alternative ways you could access timely support and care.

If you ever find yourself in a similar situation again, and your care coordinator is unavailable or it is after hours, I strongly encourage you to call 000 or visit an Emergency Department for immediate assistance if the MHERL service is unable to assist you.

To ensure this does not happen again to you or anyone else, I would like our Patient Experience Department to investigate this issue further. If you are comfortable, could you please provide more details about when and where this occurred? Your feedback is invaluable in helping us improve our services. If you would prefer, you can also contact the Patient Experience Department directly 9224 1637 from 8am to 4pm during weekdays or alternatively you can email RPBG.feedback@health.wa.gov.au.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are committed to ensuring that no one in crisis has to go through a similar experience and again, I am truly sorry for how traumatic this was for you.

Kind Regards,

Ben Noteboom

Executive Director

Royal Perth Bentley Group

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