Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint, made on behalf of his daughter Miss Y, about the contents of a recent Council care and support plan. An investigation by us would not lead to a different outcome and we cannot achieve the complaint outcome Mr X seeks.

The complaint

1. Mr X is Miss Y’s father. Miss Y used to live with her parents but currently lives in a residential care home. Mr X complains Council officers produced a care and support plan which uses out-of-date information, is untrue and does not reflect the content of a review meeting about Miss Y’s provision.
2. Mr X wants a reassessment of Miss Y’s wishes about where she wants to live because she does not want to stay in her current placement.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate 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 continue an investigation if we decide:

• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome; or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mr X disputes the contents of the care and support assessment. The Council considers the plan is accurate and reflects the review meeting, which involved Miss Y, Mr X and his wife Mrs X.
6. Mr X can register his specific disagreements with the contents of the plan by providing this information to the Council, to be put on Miss Y’s file alongside the plan. Alternatively, he may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to ask for a right of rectification of the file. We cannot order councils to delete or change a care file document so an investigation by us would not lead to a different outcome.
7. The outcome Mr X says he seeks from the complaint is a reassessment which reflects Miss Y’s current circumstances and her wishes about where she lives. Miss Y’s care home placement and care provision was decided by the Court of Protection (CoP). The Council must comply with the court’s decision until it is changed by that court. The decision on where Miss X lives cannot be changed by the Council’s care and support review process, nor by our complaint process. We will not investigate the complaint because further investigation of the Council’s care process would not lead to a different outcome for Miss Y or her family.
8. If Mr X’s key goal is to change where Miss Y lives, he would need to put that case before the CoP, providing his reasons and evidence on why Miss Y’s living arrangements should change. As explained above, that is not a decision which the Council’s care processes or our complaints process can overturn.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because:
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome; and
• we cannot achieve the outcome Mr X seeks.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman