Summary: The complaint is about payment for respite care. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint because the Council has offered to pay the relevant amount anyway. There is not enough injustice to pursue other parts of the complaint.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains the Council wrongly failed to pay towards the cost of respite care for her partner Mr Y, resulting in her and Mr Y having to cover the full cost. Ms X is also dissatisfied about some of her communications with the Council.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe it is unlikely we would find fault, or the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information Ms X provided and a complaint response the Council sent us. I shared my draft decision with Ms X and considered her comments on it.

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What I found

4. Ms X’s partner, Mr Y, has disabilities. The Council’s support plan said the Council would pay £563.63 per week towards the cost of Mr Y staying in a care home for two weeks as respite for Ms X. the Council and Ms X disagree about whether the support plan made clear that any respite should be arranged through the Council.
5. Ms X says the Council recommended a particular care home but that home then told her it could not meet Mr Y’s needs. Ms X states she told the Council about this by telephone and was not advised she needed to book any alternative respite provider through the Council. The Council says it has no record of such a call.
6. Ms X then arranged two weeks’ respite in another care home without involving the Council. The Council then declined to pay towards the cost, saying it only pays for respite arranged through the Council. Ms X says she borrowed money to cover the shortfall. In response to Ms X’s complaint, the Council did not accept fault but as a goodwill gesture offered to pay £563.63 per week for the two weeks.
7. If respite had been arranged in the way the Council says it requires, the Council would have paid £563.63 a week for two weeks. It has now offered to pay that anyway. Responding to a draft of this decision, Ms X disputed the Council had offered that. However, having seen the Council’s responses to Ms X’s complaint, I am satisfied that is what the Council offered.
8. The Council’s offer to pay means Ms X and Mr Y are in substantively the same position they would have been in if the events leading to the complaint had not happened. In that context, I do not consider there is enough unremedied injustice to warrant the Ombudsman seeking to investigate whether there was fault by the Council about payment for respite care.
9. Ms X also says the Council wrongly told her that NHS-funded nursing care (FNC) would not cover part of the respite cost. However, the NHS did pay FNC, which the care home reimbursed to Ms Y unprompted within two weeks. So I do not consider there is a significant enough injustice on this point to warrant the Ombudsman investigating whether the Council was at fault.
10. Ms X complained to the Council about a Council officer ending a telephone call and about the Council inappropriately using her first name in correspondence. I do not consider either of those points disadvantaged Ms X significantly enough for the Ombudsman to pursue them. I also note the Council accepted it should not have used Ms X’s first name and reminded the officer involved about this. The Ombudsman would be unlikely to recommend more on that point.

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Final decision

11. The Ombudsman should not investigate this complaint. This is because there is not enough unremedied injustice to warrant investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman