My granddaughter was called to school to collect her five-year-old son the other day. He had cut his mouth when he fell from a climbing frame and needed hospital treatment. She took him to Chase Farm Hospital on foot, where she was told the cut needed stitching but they had no one there qualified to do it. They redirected her to Barnet A&E.

Both mother and child were very distressed when she took him by bus to Barnet Hospital, where she was told that because he was so young and the cut was inside his mouth it would heal without treatment. They could have put him to sleep and stitched it but thought this unnecessary as it would be too distressing for such a small boy when it would heal without treatment.

By the time they got home, tired and irritable, it was past his bedtime. They had left school at 2pm and didn’t arrive home until 8-8.30pm.

This was a very traumatic experience for both mother and child and I doubt that either of them will willingly go to the urgent care centre in the future. This leaves us in Enfield with very little choice in an emergency. A painful experience was exacerbated for the mother and child when all they really needed was reassurance, which would have been a faster, cheaper and all together a better experience.

This is just one example of how Chase Farm urgent care centre is not working for the benefit of local people.

According to the remit of the service, this was a wound that could have and should have been treated at Chase Farm. I do not understand why the urgent care centre did not know that a wound in a child’s mouth heels very quickly and without intrusive stitching. It beggars belief that they had a 30 minute journey each way and a long wait – neither of which were necessary.

Joyce Wiles

Rosewood Drive, Enfield