Summary

Complaint from a woman about the way the trust and the council dealt with her application for a personal budget (self directed support or 'SDS').

The complaint

A report of a joint investigation by the Local Government Ombudsman and the Health Service Ombudsman into a complaint about Sheffield City Council and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust (the trust).

Complaint from a woman about the way the trust and the council dealt with her application for a personal budget (self directed support or 'SDS'). The trust and the council did not work quickly enough to provide a remedy to the woman after her complaint was upheld in March 2014. So the woman, a double amputee with significant mental health issues, has not access to appropriate social care support for more than 12 months, and had the stress of continuing to pursue a complaint which should have been resolved much sooner.

Finding

The Ombudsmen upheld the complaint and found fault.

Recommendations

The Ombudsmen recommended the council and the trust:

• write to the woman, within one month, to apologise for the faults identified, and the distress these faults caused;
• reimburse £14,000 to the woman for the costs she incurred in buying support that should properly have come from her SDS budget, covering the period January 2014 to February 2015 inclusive;
• agree her monthly SDS as a matter of urgency and ensure that payments are made within three months at the latest and backdated appropriately;
• pay her £12,000 to acknowledge the impact on her of not having an adequate SDS budget in place. We have arrived at this figure by considering the woman's vulnerability, the impact on her daily life, and the length of time she has been affected;
• pay the women a further £1,000 to acknowledge the avoidable stress and frustration, and her justifiable outrage, from having to pursue her complaint;
• disregard these payments when assessing her financial contributions to her SDS budget; and
• produce an action plan within three months addressing the faults listed within the report and setting out what action has and will be taken to address them.

The trust and the council accept these recommendations.

 

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