Definitely get it all in writing. When Mum was in hospital both the CHC checklist & DST were completed by a member of the discharge team. The checklist was already completed prior to our discussion and I was told that they 'don't really hold MDT meetings'. When I raised concerns with the individual's manager about the correct process not being followed the individual subsequently wrote in Mum's file that 'there was a question mark over whether daughter is acting in patients best interests'!! When I subsequently got a copy of the DST it stated that the family had been fully involved in the assessment, agreed with the domain scores but were unable to attend the MDT. Err no, not true, we only saw the DST after it had been completed. The form itself contained numerous errors and had clearly been 'copied & pasted' from someone else's assessment. When I suggested to the individual that she had copied & pasted the content she turned defensive/aggressive and denied this, stating that there were some 'typos', despite there being no way that some of the errors could possibly have been typos.
If you do go down the route of submitting a complaint be prepared for a lengthy wait and don't expect that the form will be corrected. An initial complaint made to the CCG was dragged out for months whilst they kept saying that they were intending to schedule a meeting but 'unfortunately various individuals were sick, on holiday etc'. They then ignored our emails for months. After almost a year we submitted a further complaint about their failure to investigate the initial complaint and received a response saying that their email monitoring process had now been updated as a result of our complaint and thanks for raising it (whilst still ignoring the initial complaint!). A separate complaint to the hospital resulted in a response stating that they 'acknowledged that the correct process had not been followed' and 'the crucial step that had been missed was the assessor failing to check if we had LPA'. No mention at all of the numerous errors in the form - some of which caused Mum harm - and ignoring the fact that the assessor had asked if we had LPA, we replied that we did and had a copy with us at the checklist meeting. It seems to be a common 'tactic' to drag things out for as long as possible and hope that the complainant goes away, and if they don't, then offer a 'partial apology' which doesn't actually address the key points of the complaint. Hope this doesn't put you off going down the formal complaint route if you have to - as others have said, it is important that errors are put right, particularly if they are medically wrong. Next up is the Dols form which contains a number of factual errors................