Sunderland City Council (21 016 240)

Category : Adult care services > Assessment and care plan

Decision : Closed after initial enquiries

Decision date : 18 Mar 2022

The Ombudsman's final decision:

Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s involvement with Ms Y’s move of accommodation. There is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating.

The complaint

  1. Ms X complains about the Council’s involvement with her daughter, Ms Y. She says the Council failed to get Ms Y the right support in her home, and Ms Y was not enabled to go out. The Social Worker did not help Ms X find a suitable placement for Ms Y after a hospital admission and lacked empathy. The Council and carers did not help Ms X access Ms Y’s property during her hospital admission to secure valuables or to arrange for possessions to be moved to her new accommodation.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

  1. The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
  2. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint unless we are satisfied the council knows about the complaint and has had an opportunity to investigate and reply. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to notify the council of the complaint and give it an opportunity to investigate and reply (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(5))
  3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate. We cannot investigate complaints about the provision or management of housing let on a long lease by a council that is a registered social housing provider. (Local Government Act 1974, paragraph 5B, schedule 5, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

  1. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
  2. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

  1. Ms X says the social worker did not give sufficient help to find a suitable placement for her daughter, Ms Y. Records indicate it was not immediately clear what type of placement Ms Y would need, and the Council and Ms X disagreed about Ms Y’s needs and how far away from her mother she should live.
  2. However, there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council that would justify us investigating. This is because Ms X’s complaint relates largely to verbal conversations with the social worker and carers. We cannot say what exactly happened during those conversations, and we could not make a judgement about tone of voice or attitude. The written correspondence I have seen does not include any evidence of inappropriate communication by the Council, or the care provider on its behalf.
  3. Ms X has not yet made a complaint to the Council about the quality of care before Ms Y’s hospital admission. It is reasonable for her to now do so. It is open to her to then bring her complaint back to the Ombudsman for us to consider separately.
  4. Part of Ms X’s complaint is about her being unable to gain access to Ms Y’s property to collect some of her possessions for her. The decision to allow access or not was ultimately the Council’s in its role as Ms Y’s landlord. We cannot investigate that, however it is open to Ms X to contact the Housing Ombudsman to ask if it will consider that matter.

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Final decision

  1. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault to justify us investigating those parts of the complaint that are in jurisdiction and that the Council has had the opportunity to respond to.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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