Summary: The Council already upheld Mr A’s complaint about late, short and missed care calls and waived charges. It also monitors the Care Provider’s performance. The action the Council has already taken is an appropriate remedy and no further action is required of the Council.

The complaint

1. Mr A complains for Mrs B that Lincolnshire County Council (the Council) charged Mrs B for short, late and missed home care calls. He also complains a different care provider offered unsuitable care (reablement care), male carers and could not specify call times.
2. Mr A also complains:
1. A carer had flu and worked over Christmas 2015
2. The Council forced Mrs B into private care
3. The care provider’s telephone system did not work properly
4. A carer was mentally and physically abusive.

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What I have investigated

3. I have investigated the complaint in paragraph one. My reasons for not investigating the complaints in paragraph two are at the end of this statement.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
5. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered Mr A’s complaint to us, the Council’s response to his complaint and documents described in the next section of this statement. The parties received a draft of this statement and I took their comments into account.

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What I found

7. Mrs B receives home care from Atlas Homecare (the Care Provider). The Council arranges Mrs B’s care and she pays the full cost of the care package.
8. The Council and Mrs B reviewed her care and support plan in January 2019. She was receiving four daily care calls: 30 minutes at 9 am, 20 minutes at 12.30, 20 minutes at 17.00 and 30 minutes at 21.00. When asked, Mrs B said she did not mind the carers being a bit early or late as long as they came. The social worker explained it may not be possible for Mrs B to have her preferred times as the Council prioritised customers who were bed bound or had a need for medication to be given at an exact time and this did not apply to her. The social worker noted the care log reflected the evening call of 30 minutes was not fully used and could be reduced to 20 minutes. Mrs B was happy with her care arrangements.
9. A further review of the care and support plan took place at the start of May 2019 and the Council agreed to increase the lunch call to 30 minutes to allow for additional time for lunch preparation and consumption. The breakfast call was changed to 8.30 am and the bedtime call reduced to 20 minutes.
10. The Council’s contract for home care gives a ‘tolerance’ of 20 minutes either side of a planned time call. So if a carer is up to 20 minutes earlier or later than the scheduled time, the call is on time. A missed call is one that either does not take place or is more than two hours after the scheduled time and are not charged for. The Council’s charging policy says people do not pay a charge if they cancel a care call with 72 hours’ notice.
11. I have looked at the carers’ daily logs from the middle of June 2018 to the middle of March 2019. These show 231 calls were late or early. The Care Provider calculated that between August 2018 and the end of May 2019, some of Mrs B’s calls were ‘under’ the allocated time (by 16 hours). But others were over the allocated time (by 18 hours).
12. Mr A also provided me with a spreadsheet of his own calculations: this concluded Mrs B’s care was ‘short’ by 20 hours for the period November 2018 to the end of May 2019. However, for June and July 2019, Mrs B received an additional 4 hours of care on top of the agreed call periods.
13. The Council holds regular meetings with all care providers it commissions to discuss performance. If any improvements are needed, the Council can, under its contract with providers, issue action plans and warning notices. It can end a contract if there is no improvement. I have looked at some of the minutes for 3 monitoring meetings where council officers and staff of the Care Provider discussed Mr A’s complaints and actions were agreed as a result.
14. Mr A complained to the Council in December 2018 through a councillor. It responded saying a direct payments officer would explore the option of a direct payment with them. A social worker would check the details of the care package with the Care Provider and the commercial team would check the Care Provider’s call time records.
15. The Council wrote to Mr A’s MP in February 2019 in response to correspondence from the MP. The letter said Mr A had decided not to pursue direct payments, and the Council had looked at the Care Provider’s call logs and agreed with Mr A’s view (that some calls were late, short or missed). It had met with the Care Provider and it had put in place measures to address the concerns raised and the Council would be monitoring performance.
16. Mr A wrote to the Chief Executive of the Council asking for a different care provider. A manager responded offering a different provider. He explained this provider did reablement care (short term care), but could also provide Mrs B’s care, which was long-term.
17. Mr A complained to the Council in March 2019. The Council upheld his complaint. It explained:
• The Care Provider used electronic call monitoring which used mobile phone tracking to record when a worker arrived at a property and when they left. Staff must start and end the recording when they were at the boundary to the person’s property.
• It was usual to allow a reasonable time to enter a property and check care logs before starting care
• Mrs B had four daily calls of 30, 20, 20 and 30 minutes. Sometimes the calls took longer, sometimes shorter. Any variation noted was reasonable
• Invoices for missed calls in December 2018 had been cancelled or refunded. It had cancelled the outstanding charge of £494 as a goodwill gesture
• The Council monitored the Care Provider’s performance
• It had offered Mrs B a different care provider.
18. Mr A told us in response to a draft of this statement, that he had spoken to Mrs B’s carers and they did not start the call record when at the boundary to the property because the bar code that they had to scan to start and end the recording was in the customer’s care log, which is inside their home. And, there was often poor phone signal which meant carers had to phone the office to say they had completed a call.
19. The Care Quality Commission inspected the Care Provider between March and May 2019. Its published report of that inspection (September 2019) noted there had been complaints about call times and missed calls and the system in place to manage this was not effective, placing people’s health and safety at risk. The CQC required the Care Provider to send it a monthly report detailing any late or missed visits. The report had to include immediate action taken to ensure safety and detail the actions taken to improve current systems.

Was there fault?

The complaint about short, missed and late calls

20. The Council upheld Mr A’s complaint, recognising there were late, early, short and missed calls. I note Mr A’s comments about how electronic call monitoring works on the ground as opposed to the system described in the Council’s complaint response. But I do not consider the difference between starting a call at the boundary to the property as opposed to inside the home to be a significant one. I note the Council accepted it was at fault and waived charges of around £500 to reflect the avoidable inconvenience to Mrs B of having late and short calls. This is an appropriate remedy. The Council already monitors the Care Provider’s performance and the CQC is also monitoring the Care Provider’s performance closely. No further recommendations from the LGSCO are necessary.

The complaint about offering an unsuitable care provider

21. There is no fault in the Council offering the alternative provider. Before doing so, it had established with the provider, that it could meet Mrs B’s needs. And, no care agency can guarantee call times or the gender of carers. There is no fault in this.

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Final decision

22. The Council already upheld Mr A’s complaint about late, short and missed care calls and waived charges. It also monitors the Care Provider’s performance. This action already taken is an appropriate remedy and no further action is required of the Council.
23. I have completed the investigation.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

24. I did not investigate the complaints in paragraph two because they are late (2(a) and 2(d) or Mr B has not complained to the Council (2(b) and 2(c)). The law says a council should have a reasonable opportunity to respond to a complains before we investigate. Mr B needs to use the Council’s complaints procedure first.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman