Summary: Ms X complained the Council reduced the direct payment support hours for her adult son, Mr Y, without any explanation. The Council was at fault for reviewing Mr Y’s care without the involvement of a specialist deafblind assessor. The Council was also at fault for not meeting Mr Y’s care needs between December 2024 and April 2025 and for telling Ms X wrong information about the number of support hours it had agreed for Mr Y. This caused Ms X distress and uncertainty but did not result in Mr Y missing out on care. The Council should apologise and make a payment to Ms X.

The complaint

1. Ms X complained on behalf of her adult son, Mr Y. Ms X complained the Council reduced Mr Y’s support hours without any consultation or review. Ms X said this left Mr Y socially isolated and affected his mental and physical health. Ms X said she had to stop working to support Mr Y as the Council were not meeting his needs or providing suitable care for Mr Y’s needs.
2. Ms X would like the Council to meet Mr Y’s care needs. Ms X said this includes the Council agreeing to pay 44 hours of direct payment a week and providing suitable support for Mr Y, rather than a care agency who do not understand his needs.

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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. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended).
5. 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.
6. 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(1), as amended).

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What I have and have not investigated

7. 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).
8. Ms X complained to the Ombudsman in July 2025 about events from April 2024 onwards. Although Ms X could have complained sooner, I have decided to investigate events from the Council’s visit to Mr Y to discuss his care package in April 2024 to when Ms X complained to the Ombudsman in July 2025. This is because the Council’s visit in April 2024 is central to the other matters Ms X complained about.

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How I considered this complaint

9. I considered evidence provided by Ms X and the Council, as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
10. Ms X and the Council have had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

The Law

Adult social care and community care assessments

11. Sections 9 and 10 of the Care Act 2014 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.
12. Councils must carry out assessments over a suitable and reasonable timescale considering the urgency of needs and any variation in those needs. Councils should tell people when their assessment will take place and keep them informed throughout the assessment.
13. The Care Act 2014 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. The support plan must include a personal budget, which is the money the council has worked out it will cost to arrange the necessary care and support for that person.
14. Section 27 of the Care Act 2014 says councils should keep care and support plans under review. Government Care and Support Statutory Guidance says councils should review plans at least every 12 months. Councils should consider a light touch review six to eight weeks after agreeing and signing off the plan and personal budget. They should carry out reviews as quickly as is reasonably practicable in a timely manner proportionate to the needs to be met. Councils must also conduct a review if an adult or a person acting on the adult’s behalf makes a reasonable request for one.

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.
16. Councils must be satisfied the person can manage the direct payment and should take “all reasonable steps” to provide help and support to people to manage the direct payment. Councils often have arrangements with other organisations to provide this service.
17. The Council must be satisfied the direct payment is used to meet the needs in the plan and therefore should have monitoring systems in place.
18. The Council must ensure the amount it pays in direct payments is enough to meet their assessed care needs. The amount a Council pays for direct payments may be lower than it would pay an agency to provide care.

Deafblind people guidance

19. The ‘Care and support for deafblind children and adults’ policy guidance’ sets out what actions a Council must take when considering the care and support needs of a deafblind person.
20. The guidance states that if a Council decides a deafblind person’s needs have changed, it must carry out a needs assessment. The Council should use the assessment to decide how the person’s needs or circumstances have changed and what impact the changes have had.
21. The guidance also states that assessments for deafblind adults should be completed by a specialist deafblind assessor.

Background

22. In April 2023, the Council arranged for a specialist deafblind assessor to complete an assessment of Mr Y’s care needs. The assessment said that Mr Y’s mother, Ms X, was reluctantly acting as his carer. Ms X said she wanted to return to work and Mr Y said he wanted to be as independent as possible.
23. The assessment said Mr Y needed support from staff who were suitably trained to meet his needs. The assessment said Mr Y had a support package of 44 hours a week but had not been able to find a suitably trained support worker. Ms X and Mr Y asked the Council to help with this. The Council then agreed to fund support for Mr Y through an agency, the Provider.

What happened

24. In mid-April 2024, the Council visited Ms X and Mr Y, during which it discussed his assistive technology needs, his package of care and completed a combined assessment. The Council’s records stated Mr Y was not using all 44 hours of his support because he did not want support from the Provider on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Council decided to reduce Mr Y’s care package by 12 hours a week and said it agreed this with Ms X and Mr Y during the visit. The Council’s combined assessment form said it previously provided Mr Y a support package of 44 hours a week of direct payments for staff who were trained to meet his needs.
25. The Council’s assessment repeated that Mr Y’s care package had been reduced and listed the days of support in the assessment record, with no support shown for Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, the Council’s assessment also stated that it had still commissioned 44 hours of support.
26. The Council’s combined assessment form said Mr Y needed to be supported by suitably trained support staff. The Council agreed to arrange and pay to train four carers from the Provider so they could meet Mr Y’s needs. The Council also agreed to arrange support for Mr Y to independently walk to a relative’s house nearby.
27. A couple of weeks later, the Council began sessions with Mr Y to help him walk to the relative's house. The Council provided further sessions with Mr Y between May 2024 and August 2024.
28. The Council then told the Provider it had reduced Mr Y’s package of care from 44 hours a week to 31 hours. There is no record of the Council’s decision to further reduce the care package from 32 hours to 31 hours. A few weeks later, the Provider contacted the Council to confirm the reduction in hours and asked the Council about paying for the staff’s training hours. The Council responded that it had agreed to pay for the training itself, but not to cover costs for the Provider’s staff to attend the training. The Provider disagreed with this and continued to dispute this with the Council over the next few months.
29. In July 2024, the Council met with Ms X, Mr Y, his advocate and the Provider. The specialist deafblind assessor also attended the meeting. During the meeting, Ms X said Mr Y had cancelled support from a carer because he was unhappy with the carer. The Council said it had not yet decided about paying the Provider for the training hours, but it had agreed to pay for the Provider to train further staff to support Mr Y. The Provider said it would not provide more staff for training until the Council had paid for the previous training hours.
30. In early September 2024, the Council paid the Provider for the training hours for its four members of staff who had been trained. In response, the Provider said it had identified three further carers that would be suitable for Mr Y’s needs. The Council recorded the Provider said Mr Y would only work with one of the four previous carers, and that carer could not cover the full hours. The Council agreed the Provider would introduce the three further carers to Mr Y and then arrange training for them.
31. In December 2024, Ms X told the Council Mr Y could not tolerate the full 44 hours a week support package and asked if three carers would be enough to cover approximately 30 hours a week support.
32. Around this time the support package with the Provider broke down. Ms X told the Council that they no longer wanted support from the Provider as it had reduced the support it provided to Mr Y and let them down over an issue with a Motability vehicle. Ms X said she felt the Council and the Provider had failed to meet Mr Y’s needs. Ms X said Mr Y would like her to support him in a paid role through direct payments.
33. In February 2025, Ms X and Mr Y complained to the Council that Mr Y had no support since his care with the Provider broke down in December 2024. Ms X was unhappy she had not had a response from the Council about her suggestion to support Mr Y in a paid role through direct payments.
34. A few weeks later, the Council told Ms X and Mr Y it agreed to pay Ms X direct payment for 32 hours of support a week. The Council said it would review this in four to six weeks. Ms X and Mr Y complained to the Council about this, saying the Council had reduced the number of hours from 44 to 32 a week and had offered to pay Ms X a lower hourly rate than it had had paid the Provider.
35. The Council responded that it had agreed the reduction in hours with Ms X and Mr Y at the annual review meeting in April 2024. The Council said Mr Y’s annual review for 2025 was due soon and Mr Y’s needs would be considered again then. Ms X responded that the April 2024 annual review the Council referred to had not taken place and said she had provided care for Mr Y since August 2024, as there was little or no support from the Provider. The Council said the direct payments to Ms X, to provide care for Mr Y, started in mid-April 2024. In context, it appears the Council made a typing error and meant mid-April 2025.
36. On 30 May 2025, a social worker from the Council visited Ms X and Mr Y and reviewed his care needs. Mr Y said it had been working well with Ms X as his support worker through direct payments. The social worker and Mr Y discussed the hours and types of support Mr Y needed, and the social worker decided Mr Y’s needs were being met with 31 hours of direct payments a week.
37. Ms X and Mr Y complained to the Council again in early July 2025 about the Council’s decision to reduce the direct payment hours. The Council responded and repeated its decision the information from the review showed Mr Y’s needs were being met with 31 hours. Ms X and Mr Y remained unhappy and complained to the Ombudsman.
38. In response to my enquiries, the Council provided a summary of support it offered Mr Y between April 2024 and December 2024. The records show when it provided Mr Y support and several occasions where Ms X cancelled support. The Council also said it accepts it should have offered Mr Y reablement services as an option in 2024. The Council told the Ombudsman that Mr Y’s current care package was 31 hours a week and it had made a mistake by stating it had commissioned 44 hours in the April 2024 assessment.

My findings

39. In April 2024, the Council decided to reduce Mr Y’s care package by 12 hours, from 44 hours a week to 32 hours a week. This decision was based on evidence that showed Mr Y was struggling to engage with the current care package. In line with the deafblind guidance, the Council should have arranged for a new assessment to be completed to consider the changes to Mr Y’s needs it had identified. This was fault. On balance, given the outcome of the combined assessment and the evidence that Mr Y struggled with 44 hours of support, it is likely the outcome would have been the same if the Council had acted without fault. However, it caused Ms X and Mr Y uncertainty about what support he would receive.
40. The Council has said Mr Y’s current care package is 31 hours a week and that it mistakenly said 44 hours in the April 2024 assessment. The Council failed to explain how a reduction of 12 hours has resulted in a care package of 31 hours, rather than 32. This was fault. It caused Ms X uncertainty as to Mr Y’s correct care package. However, as Mr Y continued to struggle with that level of care, he did not miss out on support because of the fault. The Council has still not explained the reason why Mr Y’s care package is 31 hours.
41. Mr Y’s care package with the Provider broke down in December 2024 and Ms X had to step in to provide the required care. The Council acted by looking at direct payments, but it did not put them in place until April 2025. Although Mr Y did not miss out on support because Ms X provided it, the Council failed to ensure it met Mr Y’s care needs. This was fault. It caused Ms X and Mr Y distress and uncertainty about what support Mr Y would receive.
42. The Council found no changes to Mr Y’s needs in the April 2025 review. The deafblind guidance states that a Council only needs to complete a new assessment if it decides a person’s needs have changed. The Council was not at fault for not arranging a new assessment as it did not find Mr Y’s needs had changed.

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Action

43. Within one month of the final decision, the Council has agreed to take the following action:
1. Apologise to Ms X for the distress and uncertainty caused by it not meeting Mr Y’s care needs between December 2024 and April 2025. The Council should also apologise to Ms X for the uncertainty it caused by wrongly stating 44 hours in the April 2024 assessment and not explaining why Mr Y’s care package is currently 31 hours rather than 32. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The organisation should consider this guidance in making the apology I have recommended.
2. Pay Ms X £250 for the distress and uncertainty caused by not arranging a new assessment for Mr Y in April 2024 and for not meeting Mr Y’s care needs between December 2024 and April 2025.
44. Within three months of the final decision, the Council has agreed to carry out the annual review of Mr Y’s care package to clarify how many hours of support he needs and how the Council is meeting his care needs. The Council should ensure a specialist deafblind assessor is involved in the review where appropriate.
45. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

46. I find fault causing injustice which the Council has agreed to remedy.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman