Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council (12 019 862)

Category : Adult care services > Charging

Decision : Upheld

Decision date : 12 Feb 2015

Summary

Complaint from a man about the decisions the council made about his mother. He complains that the council changed the contractual funding arrangements for his mother's residential care placement. As a result she was paying a top-up fee of £88.70 a week.

The complaint

Complaint from a man about the decisions the council made about his mother. He complains that the council changed the contractual funding arrangements for his mother's residential care placement. As a result she was paying a top-up fee of £88.70 a week.

Finding

The Ombudsman upheld the complaint and found fault causing injustice.

Recommendations

To remedy the injustice caused, we recommend the council should:

  • reimburse the women's estate the full amount of the third party top-up payments that have been made;
  • provide the son with a full written apology;
  • review the individual cases of other affected residents and consider whether a similar remedy is appropriate. This applies to all affected residents placed at Auden House and any other care home that have set their fees above the council rates. This applies only to residents placed in care homes prior to the introduction of the Quality Framework.

Further report

On 12 March we issued a further report into Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council after it complied with only one of our recommendations (to review the individual cases of other affected residents). We considered the council's arguments for not complying but asked it to reconsider its position and comply with the other recommendations.

Statement of non-compliance

The action taken by the council following consideration of our reports was not satisfactory. We therefore served a notice requiring the council to publish a statement (in accordance with the Local Government Act 1974) in two editions of a newspaper on a news page. The council published this statement in the Manchester Weekly News on 10 and 17 March 2016.

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