Summary: Mrs X complained about delays in the Council’s actions related to her son, Mr Y’s, adult social care assessment. We found fault because the Council took too long to begin and progress with the assessment process. This caused avoidable distress, frustration and uncertainty for Mrs X and meant Mr Y’s assessment remained incomplete. To remedy the injustice caused, the Council will apologise to Mrs X, complete the care planning process and make a payment to her. It will make a payment to Mr Y if it assesses this is due to him.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains about how the Council has handled her request for an adult social care assessment for her son, Mr Y. She is unhappy with delays throughout the process and complains the Council has not offered any financial assistance for him to attend a day centre despite his care needs.
2. Mrs X says this has caused her avoidable distress, frustration and uncertainty. She also says it has affected her and Mr Y’s finances.

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 significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. 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)
5. We may investigate complaints from the person affected by the complaint issues, or from someone else if they have given their consent. If the person affected cannot give their consent, we may investigate a complaint from a person we decide is a suitable representative. (section 26A or 34C, Local Government Act 1974)
6. When considering complaints, we make findings based on the balance of probabilities. This means that we look at the available relevant evidence and decide what was more likely to have happened.
7. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

Back to top

What I have and have not investigated

8. My investigation begins in December 2023 when Mrs X first contacted the Council to request a Care Act assessment for Mr Y. This is more than 12 months before Mrs X brought her complaint to us in March 2025 which makes it a late complaint. However, I am satisfied that it is appropriate to exercise discretion to investigate back to December 2023 due to the circumstances of the complaint.
9. My investigation ends when Mrs X brought her complaint to us.

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

10. I have considered all the information Mrs X provided. I have also asked the Council questions and requested information, and in turn have considered the Council’s response.
11. Mrs X and the Council had the opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I have taken any comments received into consideration before reaching my final decision.

Back to top

What I found

Care Act 2014

12. Sections 9 and 10 of the Care Act 2014 (the Act) require councils to carry out an assessment for any adult with an appearance of need for care and support. They must provide an assessment to everyone regardless of their finances or whether the council thinks the person has eligible needs. The assessment must be of the adult’s needs and how they impact on their wellbeing and the results they want to achieve. It must also involve the individual and where suitable their carer or any other person they might want involved.
13. The Act gives councils a legal responsibility to provide a care and support plan (or a support plan for a carer). The care and support plan should consider what needs the person has, what they want to achieve, what they can do by themselves or with existing support and what care and support may be available in the local area. When preparing a care and support plan the council must involve any carer the adult has.

Care and Support Statutory Guidance

14. The Care and Support Statutory Guidance (the CSSG) provides guidance linked to the Act. The CSSG sets out how a local authority should go about performing its care and support responsibilities. It explains that whenever a local authority carries out any care and support functions it must act to promote wellbeing.

Direct payments

15. Direct payments are monetary payments made to individuals who ask for them to meet some or all of their eligible care and support needs. They enable people to arrange their own care and support to meet those needs. The council must ensure people have relevant and timely information about direct payments so they can decide whether to request them. If they do so, the council should support them to use and manage the payment properly.

What happened

16. I have set out below a summary of the key events. This is not meant to show everything that happened. Mrs X is representing her adult son, Mr Y, in this complaint. Mr Y has both additional and care needs.
17. In mid-December 2023, Mrs X contacted the Council and asked for a care assessment under the Act to be done for Mr Y. The Council acknowledged the request and said Mr Y was now on its waiting list. It placed Mr Y as low priority.

2024

18. At the beginning of March, Mrs X chased the Council as she had heard nothing more after her assessment request. The Council explained it was prioritising cases according to risk and it would discuss prioritising Mr Y at its next allocation meeting. Unhappy with this, Mrs X asked her concerns to be registered as a complaint.
19. The Council sent its complaint response in mid-April. It apologised for the delay in allocating a social worker to complete the assessment, said it was now able to allocate someone and they would be in touch to begin the process.
20. Mrs X escalated her complaint to stage two of the Council’s process a few days later. She remained unhappy with delays and questioned why Mr Y was not a higher priority.
21. A social worker (Officer J) was allocated to the case at the end of April, she made first contact with Mrs X in mid-May and met with the family a week later.
22. Officer J visited the family again in early and mid-June to gather more information needed for the assessment. Mrs X explained that Mr Y enjoyed attending a specific day centre the family had been paying for privately, Centre A. She wished for him to continue attending but with financial assistance from the Council. Centre A did not have a contract with the Council. Officer J explained that any Council involvement meant it would look at its own contracted services in the first instance to see if they could meet any of Mr Y’s assessed needs.
23. The Council sent its stage two complaint response to Mrs X in mid-June. It said it had assessed Mr Y’s risk when the family approached it in December 2023. It said he was assessed as low priority because his family were providing care and support and paying for day services at Centre A. The Council confirmed Officer J was writing up Mr Y’s assessment and the other steps the process would follow after the assessment was finalised. It signposted Mrs X to us.
24. At the end of June, Officer J confirmed to Mrs X that she was now able to write up Mr Y’s assessment and send it for manager approval.
25. At the end of July, the Council completed Mr Y’s assessment. It called Mrs X to explain that it would now use its placement team to try and source a suitable day service for Mr Y. It said there was a waiting list for the cases to be assigned to a caseworker in the brokerage team.
26. In mid-October, the Council allocated Mr Y’s case in its brokerage team and began to try and source a day centre placement for him.
27. At the end of November, the Council contacted Mrs X to advise it could offer him a placement at a different day centre, Centre B. Mrs X voiced concerns as Mr Y had taken a long time to settle at Centre A. The family said it knew nothing about Centre B and did not want any further change for Mr Y.
28. Mrs X also made another complaint to the Council the next day. She again complained about the delays. She said Centre B had called her the day before and Mr Y had previously been very clear he did not wish to attend anywhere other than Centre A. Mrs X was also unhappy with the assessment completed by Officer J. She said it was factually incorrect and did not reflect Mr Y’s needs.
29. In mid-December, the Council contacted Mrs X to discuss matters further. It emailed her to say, if she wished, it would contribute £52.70 per day via a direct payment towards Mr Y attending Centre A as it had no links to the centre. Mrs X said that until her complaint had been finalised, the family would continue to pay for Mr Y’s attendance at Centre A themselves.
30. A few days later, the Council sent Mrs X its stage one response to her recent complaint. It explained the delays being due to large numbers of referrals and emergency cases and the assessment had taken longer than expected due to staff absence. The Council repeated that it did not have a contract with Centre A and a direct payment would need to be set up for any contribution to be paid towards costs for Centre A. It did not uphold Mrs X’s complaint.
31. Mrs X escalated her complaint the next day. She said the assessment was inaccurate and was not as comprehensive as it should have been.

2025

32. The Council sent Mrs X its stage two complaint response at the end of February 2025. It said part of the delay was because it had wanted further clarification about why Mrs X was unhappy with Mr Y’s assessment. It said that without more information from her about the alleged inaccuracies, it was not able to comment further. It could not otherwise find evidence the assessment was incorrect. It repeated its stance about direct payments towards the cost of Centre A but that this would be dependent on a full financial assessment being completed for Mr Y which had not yet been done.
33. Mrs X brought her complaint to the Ombudsman in March.
34. The Council contacted Mrs X again in June and July to ask if she wished to proceed with direct payments. Mrs X emailed the Council early in July to say she had made a complaint to us and was awaiting a response. The Council then placed Mr Y’s case on hold.

Analysis

Care Act assessment

35. The CSSG says that an assessment should be carried out over an appropriate and reasonable timescale.
36. The Council was entitled to prioritise Mr Y’s case as it saw fit and has explained its rationale for this. However, from Mrs X’s initial request, the Council took almost 20 weeks to allocate the case to Officer J and almost 22 weeks to make initial contact with her to begin the assessment process. It was not until the end of July 2024 and 32 weeks after the initial request that the Council signed off Mr Y’s initial strengths and needs assessment.
37. I am satisfied the Council was too slow to act overall and too slow to complete Mr Y’s needs assessment. It allowed things to drift despite a chase from Mrs X and a formal complaint about the delays. This was fault. It caused Mrs X avoidable distress, frustration and uncertainty. It also meant Mr Y had to wait longer than he should for the care act assessment process to begin. I have made a recommendation below to remedy this injustice.

Financial assessment

38. In response to my enquiries, the Council said it normally tries to respond to referral requests straight away but that delays sometimes occur due to staff absence or increased demand. The Council also said it should have completed a provisional financial assessment within 20 days of receiving the information from Mrs X and that it should have advised her a final assessment would have been completed when the care and support plan was finished.
39. The needs assessment team referred the case to the finance team on the day the original assessment was finalised. The finance team made first contact with Mrs X at the end of August 2024, nearly five weeks later.
40. Mrs X sent the required evidence back to the team at the beginning of October 2024. The Council has confirmed it has not completed the financial assessment since this time. This was in part due to Mrs X no longer wishing to engage after mid-December 2024.
41. However, I am satisfied the Council was too slow to act and allowed things to drift. The initial delay and lack of any completed financial assessment despite receiving relevant evidence was fault. It caused Mrs X avoidable distress, frustration and uncertainty. It also meant the effect on Mr Y’s finances was unclear as the Council did not act swiftly when it received evidence for his case. I have made a recommendation below to remedy this injustice.

Care and support planning

42. In response to my enquiries, the Council said it had not been able to complete a care and support plan as Mrs X stopped engaging with its placement team.
43. Whilst I acknowledge this, Mrs X did not stop engaging until around one year after she had made her initial request for the care act assessment which would lead to the care and support plan.
44. After finalising Mr Y’s assessment in late-July 2024, the placement team did not make contact with Mrs X until 10 weeks later. The Council held no discussions with the family about Centre B until the end of November 2024 when a further eight weeks had passed.
45. In the circumstances of this complaint, I am satisfied the Council was too slow to act and allowed things to drift. This was fault. It caused Mrs X further avoidable distress and frustration. It also meant Mr Y’s care and support plan was not finalised due in part to these initial delays. I have made a recommendation below to remedy this injustice.

Mr Y’s eligibility

46. In response to my draft decision on this complaint, the Council acknowledged that Mr Y’s assessment was delayed and there was drift throughout the process. The Council confirmed it had established Mr Y’s eligibility for care and support on 12 June 2024. I am satisfied the Council should backdate any support it assesses Mr Y is due to this date because of the injustice outlined above. I have made a recommendation below linked to this.
47. The Council has accepted numerous recent recommendations from us linked to Care Act assessments and the care planning process in similar but unrelated complaints. With this in mind, I do not intend to make any further service improvement recommendations on this complaint.

Complaint handling

48. Mrs X escalated her second complaint late in December 2024 to stage two of the Council’s process. The Council said it would issue a response in 10 working days. Instead, it did not contact Mrs X until 24 working days had passed. It apologised for the delay. It said there had been an administrative error which meant it had not made contact to ask her to send it details of what she believed to be wrong in Mr Y’s assessment.
49. I acknowledge that further time taken to formally respond after this contact was in part due to further communication between both parties about what the specific detail of Mrs X’s unhappiness was. Mrs X chose not to provide detail and the Council issued its response a few days later.
50. Not making any contact with Mrs X until after its deadline for response had passed was fault. This caused Mrs X distress, frustration and uncertainty. However, the Council has already apologised for this, so I will make no further recommendation related to this injustice.

Back to top

Agreed action

51. To remedy the injustice caused by the faults I have identified, the Council has agreed to take the following action within four weeks of the date of my final decision:
• apologise to Mrs X for the identified injustice; and
• make a symbolic payment to Mrs X of £350 to reflect the distress, frustration and uncertainty caused by the identified injustice.
52. Within six weeks of the date of my final decision the Council will:
• complete the care planning process, including the financial assessment and discuss direct payments with Mrs X; and
• organise direct payments for Mr Y if the Council assesses it has a responsibility to contribute towards his eligible care and support needs and Mrs X agrees to direct payments.
53. If the Council assesses that it would have financially contributed towards Mr Y’s eligible care and support needs, it will make a payment to Mr Y within eight weeks of the date of my final decision. This payment should be equivalent to the amount Mr Y would have received in direct payments from 12 June 2024 to the time direct payments are in place in 2026.
54. The apology written should be in line with the Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies on making an effective apology.
55. Payments made are in line with the Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies.
56. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

Back to top

Final decision

57. I have now completed my investigation. I uphold this complaint with a finding of fault causing an injustice.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman