Ted Baillieu your public mental healthcare sucks hairy dogs balls. Fix it. Yesterday.

I have officially reached the end of my patience.
Not with my son, not with his disabilities or his mental health issues but with the public health/mental health system here in Victoria.
This is where I throw down the gauntlet, where I name and shame the shitful hospitals.
Oh, wait.
There is only ONE shitful hospital.
In my opinion.
Monash Medical Centre at Clayton.
And before you get on your high horses I have worked there in several different depts through nurse agencies.
So, back in April of 2010 we called the police and ambulance to attend my son who was losing the plot.
Both emergency services attended, we went to Monash Medical Centre in Clayton via ambulance WITH police escort.
We got trundled through and then.....we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The poor registrar on duty busted her gut trying to get someone to come down to review Aspie teen...she rang a bajillion bastards but not one of the mongrels, INCLUDING Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, would dare dirty their precious selves in A&E.
So, we went home.

The 2nd time, not quite a month later, the ambos attending made the diagnosis of "Ohh, he's just had a temper tantrum".
Really?
You call smashing a house up, screaming incoherently, frothing at the mouth, wrapping a belt around your neck until you turn blue, climbing a tree and trying to hang yourself with said belt while making random paranoid claims a temper tantrum?
Then we got to Monash Medical Centre where the triage nurse - and, yes, she still works there, go figure - told me (and I quote verbatum)
"We have other children with more urgent needs who have to be seen ahead of your son, you have several hours to wait ahead of you, we can't even guarantee we can get anyone down here to look at him. Go wait in the waiting room."
The waiting room that was overflowing out into the car park.
Yeah, Monash Medical Centre sucks shit.
And, yes, I lodged a verbal complaint which was dealt with UBER pronto by the Director of Paediatric emergency medicine but, gee whiz, the same nurse crapped all over the admission of my Dad a few months later so obviously that "talk" you were going to have with her didn't make a dent on the thick matter between the stupid bint's ears.
Such was the crappy response it actually stopped me from trying to get help for months as I had been told by that useless ambo I HAD to attend Monash Medical Centre, that we DIDN'T get a say in where my child got treated.

We have called headspace, CAMHS, the cops, the ambos, the paediatrician, disability services and Uncle Tom Cobbley.
Some cops wanted to charge Aspie teen, others were more understanding, CAMHS intake worker didn't want to help telling me to get him charged by the police, disability services only got their act together after months of requests when the cops called them on our behalf, headspace felt he was too complex to attend there.
We have been to the Royal Children's Hosp - where the staff totally freakin' rock and run rings around those at Monash Medical Centre.

We have, as you know, recently attended the Royal Children's where they bent over backwards to get Aspie teen seen quicker at CAMHS for a medication review due to the fact he was trying to use knives on himself.
So, today we went to CAMHS stupidly hoping and thinking we were going to get some action, some medication review, something.
Nope.
They didn't even have his old history from his previous attendence there nor the paperwork the headspace psychistrist had copied to fax to them last week.
We got seen, asked a bunch of questions then told in another week or so they'd make a referral to yet another fucking public mental healthcare service "to get a really thorough assessment done".
Cos all the freaking specialists we've seen, the psychologist, the neurologist, the psychiatrists, the paediatrician, the speech therapists, the early intervention therapists and the umpteen counsellors haven't spent months doing 'really thorough assessments' already?
The bulging fucking file, full of reams and reams of documents of assessments, diagnosis', labels, names, treatments, interventions, behaviour management plans, and the eleventy hundred medications used doesn't mean diddly squat?
Because this new mob will do "a really thorough assessment" and rule out "labels no longer current like Aspie Teen's Tourette's"?
Because the freaking Tourette's was ONLY present just this week with his verbal tics in grunting during his anxiety attack at the Royal Children's Hosp, at home, prior to swimming, when shopping, when doing schoolwork?
But this is not current?!
What really pisses me off is the fact that, yes I am fully aware these people are over-worked and under-paid BUT they are in a position where they NEED TO LISTEN to what is being relayed to them.
They NEED to follow through on their DUTY OF CARE, they cannot just go through the motions, they HAVE to listen to the information being told to them.
BECAUSE THAT IS THEIR FUCKING JOB.
And after all this shit of almost 12 months where are we at?
Same old, same old - no medication review, no help, no assessment, nothing.

I have a 14 yr old who is unstable, who is on anti-psychotic and anti-anxiety medications which are doing jack shit, he is flipping out and smashing the house up several times each week on average, hurting us as well as himself, attempting to injure himself more and more, has admitted to hearing voices and yet....
Victoria's Mental Health sucks hairy dogs' balls.
Nothing will get done until someone is badly hurt and then the depts will panic, going into overdrive, looking to place the blame with either the victim or the scapegoat who is the lowest rung in the organisation.