Unfortunately my mother cannot communicate at all now. My daughter has applied for an order of protection, which is moving through slowly but needs to get mother's mail redirected to her, rather than to her sheltered accomodation, as some of the mail seems to be misssing and we cannot, at the moment, arrange for the sender to change the address. The GP seems not to understand a simple request to provide a certificate in order that the Post Office will agree to redirect mail to my daughter.

My mother is in Bromley, Kent, my daughter is in Newark, Notts and my son, with whom I am staying right now, is in Shepperton, Surrey. Most of the time everything has to be dealt with by phone calls and the GP won't even return a call herself - everything goes via a secretary. This means that every 'misunderstanding' on the GP's part involves time and large numbers of phone calls. Right now we are all getting very frustrated by this problem at a time which is difficult for all concerned.

Living in the USA I am lucky to have a daughter who is proving to be extremely capable of working her way through the bureaucratic system and making use of the web to find out the info she needs. However, it is amazing what one spanner in the works - in this case the GP - can do to make a difficult situation nighon impossible.

GUEST 5.58pm - thanks for that idea. I think we may try that one as it does seem to make things move!