Summary: Mr X complains the Council has failed meet his care needs since a care provider stopped visiting him in 2017, leaving him largely unsupported but also paying for his own care. The Council has accepted its failings and proposed a remedy. But it needs to do more as its proposal does not remedy all the injustice caused to Mr X.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mr X, complains the Council has failed meet his care needs since a care provider stopped visiting him in 2017, leaving him largely unsupported but also paying for his own care.

Back to top

What I have investigated

2. I have investigated events since the care provider stopped visiting Mr X in November 2017.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)
5. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

6. I have:
• considered the complaint and the documents provided by Mr X’s Advocate;
• discussed the complaint separately with Mr X and his Advocate;
• considered the comments and documents the Council has provided in response to my enquiries; and
• shared a draft of this statement with Mr X, his Advocate and the Council, and invited comments for me to consider before making my final decision.

Back to top

What I found

What happened

7. Mr X has Asperger’s syndrome. His condition causes repetitive patterns of behaviour, which make it difficult to complete tasks and disrupt his sleeping and eating patterns. The Council commissioned a care agency to provide nine hours of support a week from April to November 2017. This ended because the support did not meet Mr X’s needs.
8. On 4 December the Council told Mr X it could now complete his assessment and would send it to him with a care and support plan to check. The Council sent a draft assessment on 14 December but also asked for more information.
9. On 27 December Mr X agreed to finish reading the assessment and pass on his comments to the Council.
10. The Council discussed amendments to the assessment with Mr X on 6 February 2018. It has provided outline care and support plans, both dated 6 February, but neither contains specific proposals for meeting Mr X’s needs.
11. On 16 February a different Social Worker started working with Mr X. She visited him on 23 February. She referred him for short-term support from a Community Support Worker (CSW) to help with food shopping, meal preparation and paperwork. She agreed to send a care and support plan for Mr X to consider.
12. Mr X’s father died abroad in early March while Mr X was on his way to see him. The Council puts the failure to complete a new care and support plan down to the death of Mr X’s father. Mr X disputes this and puts it down to problems with the Council.
13. On 19 March, after Mr X had returned to the UK, the Council noted completing a care and support plan was not a priority at the moment, as Mr X needed time to settle back home and manage his father’s affairs. Mr X’s Social Worker provided some practical support around this.
14. On 27 March Mr X’s then Advocate confirmed work on a care and support plan would continue when he was ready.
15. On 6 April the Council told Mr X it would provide support from a CSW until they had completed his care and support plan.
16. The Council visited Mr X on 23 April and discussed the need to complete a care and support plan aimed at developing independence, based on supporting him for six months, with a review after 6 weeks.
17. From May the Council provided interim support from a CSW once a week. The Council says this was to help with: attending an Asperger’s Group; online shopping; telephone calls; and attending appointments. However, the CSW could not help Mr X with the Asperger’s Group as it was on a day she did not work. There was a gap from early June until 27 July, when a new CSW started working with Mr X.
18. On 4 May the Council told Mr X it had drafted a care and support plan and submitted it for "discussion at a Care Act Assurance Meeting". Mr X confirmed the support from a CSW was helpful.
19. On 4 June the Council again told Mr X his care and supported would be discussed at the next Care Act Assurance Meeting.
20. The Council says it considered employing a Personal Assistant (PA) to work with Mr X but decided he did not need one as he was receiving support from a CSW and the NHS.
21. The Council visited Mr X on 13 July and told him the Care Act Assurance Meeting had turned down the funding request. Mr X said he would consider employing a PA for one hour, three evenings a week. He said he would have to cancel his domestic (cleaning) calls to pay for this.
22. The Council continued to provide support until it closed the CSW service down on 12 October.
23. Mr X paid privately for five hours of PA support a week from October.
24. In February 2019 the NHS told the Council it was discharging Mr X as it appeared his needs resulted from Asperger’s syndrome, rather than Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, as had previously been thought. The Council noted it would need to reassess Mr X.
25. In May 2019 the Council reviewed Mr X’s needs. It says it did this as the CSW support had ended and the NHS had discharged him from mental health services. The Council identified the need for 10 hours of PA support a week.
26. On 1 November the Council wrote to Mr X apologising for delays. It said it was not yet clear about whether it could offer further ongoing support. It offered funding for 5 hours of support a week from 4 November for eight weeks. It said this was on a “without prejudice” basis until it could reassess his needs. Mr X’s 5 November care and support plan provides for a personal budget of £85 a week, paid as a direct payment, for five hours of support from 11 November.
27. In January 2020 the Council updated Mr X’s care and support plan to provide for a personal budget of £162.50 a week to pay for 10 hours of support from 5 January.
28. In July the Council agreed to continue funding Mr X’s personal budget for a further six months.
29. When responding to my enquiries, the Council accepted it had failed to put support in place until November 2019. It put this down to an “error in practice” and will ensure staff receive training and support to reduce the possibility of reoccurrence. It offered to pay Mr X £440 to repay him for the cost of paying privately for five hours of PA support a week for 55 weeks from October 2018 to November 2019. This is based on an assumed cost of £75 a week, less an estimated charge of £67 a week if the Council had been providing support. It also offered to pay £300 for the time and trouble caused to Mr X.

Is there evidence of fault by the Council which caused injustice?

30. The Council accepts it failed to support Mr X between October 2018 and November 2019, during which time he paid privately for care. But that is not the only fault by the Council.
31. When the care provider stopped supporting Mr X in November 2017, the Council did not put interim support in place until May 2018. Although the Social Worker did what she could to help Mr X in 2018 after his father died, this left him with very little support for six months. That was fault by the Council.
32. It is not clear what support the Council assessed Mr X as needing in 2018, as the outline care and support plans do not make this clear. Under the Care Act 2014, once a Council has identified eligible care needs it must produce a care and support plan explaining it how it will meet them. The Council was at fault for failing to do this. This left Mr X with some ad hoc support which ended in October 2018, after which he only had the support he paid for himself. The ending of Mr X’s support from the CSW should have prompted the Council to review his needs. But it did not do that until May 2019. That was further fault by the Council.
33. The Council did not provide the 10 hours it had assessed Mr X as needing until January 2020. Mr X continued to fund his own care until then.
34. This means the Council was not meeting all Mr X’s eligible needs for a significant period of time. Mr X says this caused his condition to deteriorate as he was not supported to maintain the progress he had previously made. He says this delayed progress in meeting his goals, including improving his sleeping and eating patterns which could have led him to become more independent. That is an injustice which requires an additional remedy.

Back to top

Agreed action

35. I recommended the Council:
• within four weeks:
1. writes to Mr X apologising for the failure to meet his needs; and
2. pays him:
1. £440 for the care he paid for between October 2018 and November 2019;
2. £300 for the time and trouble it has put him to; and
3. £750 for the failure to meet all his care needs for a significant period of time.
• within eight weeks identifies the action it needs to take to ensure that when a care package is not approved it does not prevent the completion of a care and support plan.

The Council has agreed to do this.

Back to top

Final decision

36. I have completed my investigation as the Council has agreed to take action which will remedy the injustice it has caused.

Parts of the complaint I did not investigate

37. I have not investigated Mr X’s complaint about the care provider as this is a late complaint (see paragraph 5 above). The care provider supported Mr X between April and November 2017. The Council first told Mr X he could complain to the Ombudsman in a letter dated 28 September 2018, responding to a complaint about the care provider. But Mr X did not contact the Ombudsman until November 2019, over a year after the Council’s letter and two years after the care provider stopped supporting him. By April 2019 the care provider was no longer in business, so the records are unlikely to exist to enable a proper investigation into its services. Therefore, while I have exercised some discretion to investigate events back to November 2017, I cannot see that there are grounds to investigate events before that.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman