Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about charging for adult social care. The Council has increased the personal budget and will backdate any overpayment. The Council has given a detailed response about requests for disability related expenditure and will consider this further if it receives supporting evidence. We are satisfied with the Council’s actions in response to the complaint and it is unlikely we would add anything further.

The complaint

1. Mr D says the Council has wrongly assessed his relative, Ms E’s, finances and Disability Related Expenditure (DRE). Mr D believes the actual hourly cost of the care package should either be covered by the personal budget or the DRE. Mr D says the Council took too long to respond to the complaint. Mr D says this has caused Ms E financial hardship and they want the Council to resolve this.

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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:

• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

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

3. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we are satisfied with the actions an organisation has taken or proposes to take. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

6. The Council is responsible to meet Ms E’s adult social care needs. It does this by giving her a direct payment to arrange her own care support at home. Ms E is using a care agency that is more expensive than the personal budget the Council provides her, and so the Council said she must pay the extra. However, the Council has recently agreed that at the time Ms E employed the care agency it was the only one available and suitable to meet her needs. Because of that the Council should have increased the personal budget to cover the full cost of the care. The Council has agreed to now do this and pay Ms E back for any overpayment she has made for her care.
7. Mr D has been in dispute with the Council for many years about Ms E’s DRE. The Ombudsman has considered an earlier complaint about this, and we will not go back over the same issues. However, the financial assessment and consideration of DRE is an annual process, and so we will consider how the Council considered it since the previous Ombudsman decision. The Council has recently given Mr D a full explanation of its decisions about requested DRE. It has asked for supporting evidence for some of the requests and will then consider it further and give its final decision. This is the correct process. Once Mr D receives the final decision, if he remains unhappy, he will need to make a new complaint to the Council about that decision. So long as the Council has followed the proper process to consider the requests of DRE the Ombudsman would not criticise the decision even though Mr D disagrees with it.
8. Mr D is also unhappy with the way the Council dealt with his complaint. But it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Mr D’s complaint because we are satisfied with the actions the Council has now taken. It is unlikely an Ombudsman investigation would add anything further.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman