Brockfield House

Brockfield House 2022-06-22 Person 4 5 0

I am at Brockfield House for my symptoms of Paranoid Schizophrenia. I have found Brockfield alright. They have helped me with my treatment.

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Brockfield House 2022-02-12 Person 3 5 0

Sadly there's a character limit so only had room for negatives Ward Environment - The chairs in the lounge are very hard and uncomfortable if you sit on them for more than 30 mins. They were not in 100% condition but they do get moved around a lot if patients watch films or sports - The neglect of personal hygiene from some patients meant that the ward didn't always smell very good. It was most unpleasant in the dining room when these patients sat in there. However I acknowledge that this is not the hospitals fault, more patients neglect to personal hygiene - The temperature on the ward was never comfortable. It was either a fridge or oven. The annoying thing was that the heating was always on full blast on the hot days and minimal in the winter. This was also the same in the therapies rooms - Till about 2019 the laundry rooms were kept unlocked. However probably due to risk they had locks on them and always locked when you shut the door. This was annoying for everybody as had to keep going to staff to unlock the laundry room. When we asked most of the staff gave the impression they were annoyed we keep asking for the door to be unlocked when we needed it Bedroom Environment - The mattresses were extremely uncomfortable and unsupportive. Really they were more like those crash mats you have in schools. They were all flat in the middle no matter how many times you turn them. I raised this issue many times to staff and our housekeeper as it got to the point where I was in chronic pain from my back and hips. They told me the mattresses have to be what they are to meet certain risk requirements which I understood, however felt this was also an excuse to brush my complaint under the carpet. I asked if I could have another mattress to put on top to double the thickness but this was declined. Staff refused to find a solution to this problem and the attitude I got from staff was " tough you get what your given". During my 3 years at Brockfield there wasn't a single night when I had a good comfortable sleep due to the pathetic mattresses. I generally had a comfier mattress in prison! - Until I was able to buy my own proper supportive pillows I had to sleep on these really flat yellow things that offered no neck and head support. You needed at least 5 pillows to make up the thickness of 1 standard pillow. If you don't ask for fresh new pillows your expected to sleep on old pillows used by ex patients. This view was expressed by all my peers - The showers do not allow you to control the temperature. If you wanted to change the temperature then GFM had to be called to change the temperature via a valve in the plumbing cupboard. GFM always claimed they could not do this but I had it done many times so definitely know that they can - My bathroom in my room was on a very slight hill which meant that most the water collected in the toilet area and not down the drain. Because of this the flooring was staring to peel away from the joins and between the joins was black mould. I mentioned this so many times to staff and in the service user forums but never go anywhere. The staff say they can't do anything because of infection control and the service user forum said that the bathroom floors are due to be changed. That was 2 years ago! Surely infection control would want to get rid of the black mould as that's a massive health risk? - When the domestics clean the rooms they don't vacuum first. This means that any bits on the floor just got mopped from 1 side of the room to the other. On many occasion I had to ask staff for the vacuum to hoover up the bits Communication (this is the biggest issue in my opinion at Brockfield House) - The communication, or lack of at Brockfield is beyond belief and is definitely their weakest skill. If it was down to me all nursing staff would be made to go onto a communication course - Staff had handovers a lot but sometimes I had to wonder what they were really talking about. I had many times when my progress or activities etc was almost put on pause as much needed information wasn't handed over or not handed over properly. If something was agreed by someone but wasn't passed along in handover then the attitude I found was always 'if it wasn't handed over it wasn't agreed'  - I was told when I first arrived at Brockfield I wad told that I was entitled to see the responsible clinician at any time outside of ward rounds. I found that this was actually not the case. There were many occasions where I needed some important info or something confirmed by the RC. Every time I was told that it has to wait for ward round but that can be a wait of 2 weeks when you need the info there and then - I was always given mixed messages about different things, also my parents were always told different things by different people as well. It wad always as if the left hand never knew what the right hand was doing - It shows that something is really wrong with the communication at Brockfield as quite often I knew more about things than the staff did, thanks to my influence and heavy involvement with management meetings and service user forum. I always found myself informing staff of things they should of known ready - Even though your encouraged to be open and honest with your thoughts and feelings. However if you express any thoughts of anger the staff write it in your notes in such a way it makes you sound more unwell than you actually. It was as if you were not allowed to express anger and got told off if you do - I had some occasions where my ward round notes were either incorrect or things not documented at all, some things quite sufficient. This causes so much stress and frustration not only for myself but also the family as they were very close with my care. It's frustrating when I knew what was agreed and said but its not documented. Again the attitude is 'if its not documented it wasn't agreed' - It took forever on Forest for documents such as ward round notes and reports to get to me compared to Dune ward. I asked for my ward round notes every time and ways reassured I'd get them at the end of every month. I chased and chased every time being told I'd get then end of that week but never did. I normally had to wait 4 months for my ward round notes by which time events had overtaken so were worthless. In the end I gave up asking as could not work out why it takes 4 months to print a few pages. - There's lots of say but never any doing at Brockfield. Staff inform you of certain things or update you but most of the time no results came from this. I was a chair member of the service user forum where all sorts of things get recommended and raised but 9 out of 10 times it was all doom and gloom - There was a time very close to my discharge where I had covid and had to isolate for 10ndays in my room. This meant that I would not be able to attend my ward round in person. I was reassured by staff I will be able to attend via video link. I welcomed this as had very important things to discuss. However on the day nobody knew anything about the decision for me to attend virtually, thus It happened behind my back. Even worse my ward round prep sheet wasn't submitted into word round so nothing I asked for got discussed. When I chased staff to find out what was discussed I felt that they were not transparent with me and gave vague answers MDT (based on Dune ward as had no issues with the Forest MDT) - During my time at Brockfield I was on 2 wards meaning 2 different MDT's. The difference in attitude was huge. These comments are based on the MDT as a whole and not on individuals. Also if it wasn't for my first MDT I would not of got a hospital order so very grateful for that - On my first ward I didn't feel that the MDT really managed to truly understand me or get into my frame of mind. When I tried to explain my actions and thinking it was always 'stop making excuses' rather than fully accepting and understanding my point of view. This upset me as gave the attitude of 'your unwell so you don't know what your talking about but we do because we're professionals' Nursing staff - Most staff are very nice and would go out if their way to help you. However there are some staff members who must hate their job given their foul attitude towards patients. You think mental health staff would have a calm and supportive attitude towards patients. There were some members that would talk to you as if your scum and one staff member said to me in my early days of admission "I'm not the one that's mental so I can do what I like". There are some staff members there are not suitable for their role and its deeply troubling to wonder why they were hired in the first place - I personally struggle with accents and there are many staff members working at Brockfield who have very strong accents, some you have to really listen to understand. You can also tell when an non English staff member writes notes as when you read them lots of things are misspelled or the vocabulary is completely wrong. The accents also made it very difficult sometimes when my parents phoned up to book visits etc Food - Everybody always moaned about the food. The meals sent at lunchtime are bland and I learned that the meals are steamed meaning any food item that would in a normal world be crispy was soggy, take the fish and chips for example - Throughout my admission there were always constant problems with the sandwiches. At first they were always bland, often stale with minimal filling. The sandwiched were then changed to a new supplier where the filling was improved but they had no butter in them so were very dry, also still stale sometimes too. Also we never got what we actually ordered. We were always sent so many vegan and gluten free stuff that nobody eats