Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about a care needs review. There is insufficient evidence of fault and injustice.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council has not provided an adequate level of support in his care and support package. Mr X also complains of delays in reviewing his care plan and poor complaint handling.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mr X has been assessed by the Council as having eligible care needs and is provided with a direct payment for his care costs. Mr X uses the direct payment to employ his son as his carer.
6. Mr X complains the direct payment rate offered by the Council is too low. We have already considered a complaint by Mr X about direct payment rates so we will not consider this again.
7. Mr X also complains the Council delayed completing a review of his care needs and did not agree to an independent review.
8. The Council say a review was completed by a member of staff who was not previously involved in Mr X’s case. This was a suitable person to complete the review and there is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s decision to have the member of staff undertake the review.
9. Mr X’s review was completed 17 weeks after it was agreed. There was a slight delay in the Council allocating the case. Because Mr X’s care plan remained unchanged, the delay in carrying out the review did not cause significant enough injustice to warrant further investigation.
10. Mr X also complains the review was inadequate because it did not consider if the personal budget was sufficient to meet his needs.
11. We are not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation has followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, even if someone disagrees with it.
12. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s processes here to warrant an investigation. The Council considered Mr X’s care and support needs and his specific circumstances when reviewing his care plan. We recognise Mr X disagrees with the Council’s decision. But it is not fault for a council to properly make a decision with which someone does not agree.
13. We will also not investigate how the Council dealt with Mr X’s complaint as it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint handling when we are not looking at the substantive issue.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint. There is insufficient evidence of fault and injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman