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Adult care services Maladministration causing injustice
24 July 2006 The Council took too long to carry out necessary adapations to a disabled man’s home. ‘Mr Hughes’ (not his real name for legal reasons) suffers from chronic back pain following an injury, and his condition has caused a progressive deterioration of his mobility. He had adaptations made to one house - including a stairlift, ramps, handrails, and a shower - but then he accepted a tenancy for an unadapted house. The Ombudsman’s investigation showed that the Council took eight months to assess his needs in his new home and a further six months to carry out the work. As a result, Mr Hughes had to wait for an unreasonable length of time for the adaptations to be carried out and suffered avoidable discomfort and inconvenience as a consequence. These unreasonable delays were within the time limits the Council had set itself, but the Ombudsman criticised the Council for having time targets which permitted undue delay to occur, finding maladministration which caused injustice to Mr Hughes. The Council agreed to pay Mr Hughes £1,250 to recognise the unreasonable delay in carrying out the adaptations to his home, but the Ombudsman recommends that it should now go on to review its resources, targets and procedures with a view to ensuring that cases can normally be allocated to an occupational therapist within three months of referral.
Date Published: 17/11/08
are in .pdf format. To view these files you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. It can be downloaded below free of charge. Click To Download