"Multiple sites ignoring parents and denying parents the option of a second opinion"

While taking my child to our local hospital and being sent to a site with pediatric care, we were repeatedly ignored, told that I, as the parent, was the problem and sent to social work without my child being tested or their condition looked into further than treating symptoms versus finding the cause. I was repeatedly sent home with an extremely lethargic child and told they would get over the illness, only for us to end up being admitted for 4 days due to how bad my child's condition was.

When we asked to be referred for further assessment, we were denied and told that our child was perfectly healthy, for which they had no evidence to support. We have since been seen by PCH immunology under a priority 1 referral in which has proven that my child suffers from a genetic immunodeficiency that affects their ability to fight viral and bacterial infections, creating a stressful situation for our family due to financial and emotional strain from our child's health and the feeling that we as a family cannot put faith in the health care sites in our local town or the pediatric ward we have been admitted to due to previous interactions.

We have an extremely supportive GP in which we have been able to have supported us through this battle of advocating for a child who cannot express themselves. We felt we were judged, ignored and not given the chance to have our concerns heard about our own child in which delayed their diagnosis and increased their aversion to medical personnel through traumatic admissions and experiences within the emergency and ward admissions. This behaviour from both sites has occurred on more than 1 occasion. The social worker on our case, through the wachs system, has encouraged us to document the repeated occurrences of us being ignored for my child's condition and has also encouraged us to write this feedback