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After self-harming over a week ago I was put under the care of the Northumberland,Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team (or the Crisis Team basically!) and on the day before I was discharged from their caseload I self-harmed again. When I did it the staff arrived to see me and ended up taking me to A&E for stitches. When they went on to their next visit with another service user, they ended up leaving my care plan at that person’s house and as soon as they realized they returned to the house and got it back. Then I got a phone call with an apology to tell me what had happened and that the Team had reported the breach of data protection. The support worker who called me asked if I wanted the complaints procedure and it didn’t take me long to reply with ‘no.’ I think he was surprised but I came to that conclusion because I knew that the Team had done all that they could to rectify the situation; they’d realized what had happened, gotten the care plan back, reported it, and apologized to me. It was that last bit that really helped in my decision not to make a formal complaint. I’ve talked before about how important apologies are to me and how I think they’re essential in mental health because they’re the cornerstone of building – or maintaining trust in a person or a service. The Manager of the service called me and asked if there was anything else they could do because she didn’t want me thinking that I couldn’t trust the Team and therefore wouldn’t utilize them as support in a crisis. But that trust has been maintained with the apology.