Summary: We cannot find fault by a support agency, acting on behalf of the Council, with respect to the substantive elements of this complaint. This is because the agency was not responsible for the matters the complainant has raised. However, the agency’s complaint handling was poor, and the Council has agreed to take steps to address this with the agency.

The complaint

1. I will refer to the complainant as Mr F.
2. Mr F complains:

• his Council-commissioned support worker delayed helping him clear up broken glass in his accommodation; and
• the support agency generally provides a service which is inadequate for his needs.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. We investigate complaints about councils and certain other bodies. Where an individual, organisation or private company is providing services on behalf of a council, we can investigate complaints about the actions of these providers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 25(7), as amended)
5. 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 or care provider has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I reviewed Mr F’s correspondence with the support agency, his care plan, the support agency’s case notes, and sought clarification of some details from the Council.
7. I also shared a draft copy of this decision with each party for their comments.

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What I found

8. Mr F suffers from mental health problems. After a stay in hospital, the Council commissioned a placement for him in specialist accommodation, run by a housing association (HA), in 2017. The Council also arranged for Mr F to receive two hours per week of support from a support agency (‘the Agency’) to help him maintain his tenancy.
9. On 8 October 2020, Mr F made a complaint to the Agency. He said, on 13 August 2019, he broke a window in his accommodation, due to distress he was experiencing because of a change in his medication. The window was double-glazed, and it was only the inner pane which broke.
10. Mr F says he reported the broken window to the HA on 13 August. The next day, he spoke to the on-site support officer from the Agency about the window. The support officer told Mr F the HA had already called to inform her about it.
11. Mr F says he initially told the support officer he wanted to clear up the broken glass himself. However, after clearing the majority of it, he realised he could not do it all without assistance.
12. Over the following weeks, Mr F says he asked for help to clear up the remaining glass several times, but this was not forthcoming. On 20 August, he self-harmed with some of the broken glass. Eventually, on 2 or 3 September, the support officer came upstairs to Mr F’s accommodation and helped him clear the glass up.
13. After complaining to the HA, Mr F says the support officer said she helped clear up the glass as soon as she had found out about it.
14. The Agency replied to Mr F’s complaint on either 27 or 29 October.
15. The Agency said it was difficult to investigate the complaint because of the passage of time. It explained there had been some initial confusion, because Mr F had also broken a second window in a communal area of the building. The support officer had reported this to the HA, not knowing who had broken it, but had found out later it was Mr F. The support officer had not reported this fact to the HA to avoid Mr F being charged for the damage, but he had been charged for the damage to the window in his accommodation. The Agency did not uphold this element of Mr F’s complaint.
16. The Agency noted Mr F had separately raised concerns about the general adequacy of the service it provided. It said it was aware Mr F had changed his support provider “some time ago” because of this. The Agency expressed its regret at this, and offered to meet Mr F to discuss his concerns. It then said it partially upheld this element of his complaint.
17. The Agency told Mr F he could escalate his complaint to stage two of its procedure if he could provide further evidence, or if “due process” had not been followed. It told Mr F he had 14 days from receipt of its stage one response to request escalation.
18. Mr F responded on 29 October to express dissatisfaction with the Agency’s response. He said he considered the Agency should offer him 24/7 support, and complained the Agency’s records did not show when he was well or unwell, which meant he could not provide evidence of his progress to his consultant. Mr F criticised the Agency for failing to co-ordinate with the community mental health team.
19. Mr F said he had been self-harming for the previous year and that he believed the support officer was aware of this. Mr F described an incident in 2015 which had led to a lengthy stay in hospital, which he considered had occurred because of a lack of support.
20. Mr F said the Agency could not properly monitor people taking powerful medication if it worked on a 9-5 basis. He said he found the Agency difficult to access, and his two hours per week of allocated support was inadequate. Mr F asked for his complaint to be escalated to stage two.
21. Mr F criticised the Agency for failing to increase his support or offer therapy when his medication changed in August 2019. He said there had been no-one on site to report the broken window to initially, because it was after 5pm and, reiterated his complaint about the length of time it took for the support officer to help clear up the glass. Mr F criticised the fact no support was available on site at the time he broke the window.
22. The Agency’s records show Mr F sent further emails, in which he accused it of acting criminally, and that the support worker had deliberately endangered him by moving his microwave. On 10 November, a manager from the Agency met Mr F to discuss his complaint. The manager ended the meeting because he said Mr F kept raising his voice, but noted Mr F had again asked for his complaint to be escalated to stage two.
23. Mr F contacted the Agency on 1 February 2021 for an update on his complaint. The Agency explained it would not escalate his complaint to stage two, because its policy required him to ask for this within 14 days and provide further evidence. It referred him to the Ombudsman instead.
24. Mr F complained to the Ombudsman on the same day.

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Analysis

25. Mr F complains his support worker delayed helping him clear broken glass up in his accommodation for approximately three weeks, despite repeated requests, which led to him self-harming. He also complains that the support provided by the Agency is generally inadequate for his needs.
26. The Council has explained that, at the time of the incident, it had commissioned the Agency to provide Mr F with two hours of support per week. The purpose of this support was specifically to help Mr F ‘maintain his tenancy’. The Council has explained this means, for example, supporting him to set up direct debits, pay his bills, and signpost him to other sources of support where necessary.
27. The Council has confirmed that the Agency did, later, become responsible for helping Mr F maintain his accommodation; but this package only began in October 2019, after the incident with the window. Since then, Mr F has changed his care provider twice. His current care package began in May 2021, and involves a three hour visit from carers each Monday.
28. As such, the evidence shows it was not Mr F’s support worker’s role to help him clear up the broken glass in his accommodation, at that time. That she eventually did so does not mean it was her duty.
29. I note Mr F says his support worker knew about the glass in mid-August, when he broke the window, and that he repeatedly asked the support worker for assistance over the following weeks (after initially saying he did not want help). However, the Agency’s complaint response denies this, and says the support worker helped him clear up the glass as soon as she found out about the problem.
30. I cannot resolve this dispute on the evidence available to me. The Agency’s case notes make only one reference to the broken glass, which was on 4 September 2019, where the support worker recorded she had helped Mr F clear it up. This would appear to support the Agency’s account, therefore, although I am conscious the notes show only what the support worker chose to record.
31. Mr F says the housing association’s records should show it informed the support worker of the broken window after his initial report, as she told Mr F it had. However, this appears to be a different issue – the question here is not when the support worker found out about the broken window, but when she found out Mr F needed help to clear up the glass. This was evidently some time later, as Mr F admits he initially said he did not want assistance.
32. Whatever the facts, I do not consider there is any value in investigating this point further. Either way, it was not the support worker’s duty to help Mr F clear up the glass. Even if I could say she knew earlier that Mr F needed help, I could not say she was at fault for failing to do something which was not amongst her duties.
33. This does raise the wider question whether Mr F was receiving adequate support at the time of the incident. Given the expansion of the Agency’s role in October, only two months later, the evidence would appear to support this view. And this also brings me to Mr F’s general complaint about the adequacy of the Agency’s support.
34. However, the Agency was not responsible for deciding what support Mr F should receive – it was for the Council, as the commissioning body, to assess his needs, decide what level of care was necessary to meet those needs, and to put an appropriate care package in place. Any doubts Mr F had about the adequacy of his support were for the Council to consider, as part of its regular reviews of his care plan.
35. Fundamentally, I am only able to investigate the complaint which has been made. Mr F made his complaint direct to the Agency, about its working practices and the level of support it had provided him. As I have explained, this appears misguided, as these were not the Agency’s decisions to make. While Mr F may have a valid complaint against the Council, I cannot investigate this, because he has not made such a complaint.
36. I note also Mr F has referred to several historic incidents, which he considers shows he has received inadequate support. But the law says a person should approach the Ombudsman within 12 months of becoming aware of an issue they wish to complain about, so I cannot investigate these matters.
37. Taking this together, therefore, I cannot criticise the Agency on the substantive points of Mr F’s complaint. I find no fault here.
38. However, I do have several criticisms of the Agency’s handling of Mr F’s complaint.
39. First, the Agency’s stage one complaint response does not address the actual point Mr F had raised, which was the support worker’s alleged failure to help him clear up the broken glass for three weeks. Rather, it concentrates on what happened with the other window. I cannot understand why the Agency did not take this opportunity to explain it was not the support worker’s role to assist him with cleaning up the broken glass, which was surely the logical response to a complaint about this.
40. Second, there does not appear to be any reason why the Agency partially upheld Mr F’s complaint about the adequacy of its service. The Agency made no finding on this complaint – it merely offered to meet Mr F to discuss his concerns. So to record this as ‘partially upheld’ is confusing and unhelpful.
41. Third, I must also question the Agency’s refusal to allow Mr F to escalate his complaint to stage two.
42. The Agency’s policy is that complainants must request escalation within 14 days of the stage one response. It is not clear what date the Agency issued its stage one response – the response itself is dated 27 October, but elsewhere the Agency says it issued the response on 29 October. But either way, there is no dispute Mr F requested escalation of his complaint, in writing, on 29 October.
43. The Agency’s records also show Mr F requested escalation again, verbally, on 10 November. This was also within 14 days of 27 October; and so it is entirely clear Mr F requested a stage two within the deadline, on two occasions.
44. The Agency has also said it will not accept a stage two complaint unless the complainant provides “evidence”.
45. But Mr F’s email of 29 October clearly sets out his reasons for dissatisfaction with the stage one response. It is not clear what other evidence he could reasonably have been expected to provide here.
46. I do accept there are occasions where it is reasonable to decline a request for escalation of a complaint. However, this is only where any further response would simply repeat what had already been said. In this case, the Agency’s stage one response did not actually address Mr F’s complaints in any meaningful way, and so I am not persuaded it did not reasonably bear further investigation. This remains true, even though I accept Mr F’s complaint appears to have been misguided.
47. I therefore find fault in the Agency’s handling of Mr F’s complaint. As the Agency was acting on the Council’s behalf here, this means I must make a finding of fault against the Council.
48. I have considered carefully whether the poor complaint handling has caused Mr F a significant injustice. Although Mr F was entitled to receive a meaningful response to his complaint, I must again consider the fact his complaint was based on a misunderstanding of the Agency’s role, and that a better response would not have left him in a significantly improved position. This being the case, I do not find the fault has caused Mr F an injustice, and so I make no recommendations for a remedy here.
49. I have also considered whether there are grounds to recommend a service improvement, with regard to the Agency’s complaint handling. The evidence does not allow me to say there is a systemic problem here, and I cannot envisage any specific steps the Council could take to prevent a recurrence.
50. However, effective complaint handling is an important part of the provision of adult care services. To this end, I consider the Council should discuss my decision with the Agency, with particular emphasis on its poor complaint handling, and asks it to consider what it can do to improve this in future. I make a recommendation to this effect.

Conclusions

51. Mr F’s complaints about the service provided by his support agency appear to be based on a misunderstanding. At the time of the incident, it was not the Agency’s role to help him clean his accommodation. It may be that Mr F was receiving inadequate support for his needs, but this was a complaint for the Council, not the Agency.
52. But the Agency’s complaint handling was poor. It did not answer Mr F’s initial complaint, and then refused to allow him to escalate it, for reasons I do not find convincing. I find fault in this aspect.
53. I do not consider this has caused Mr F an injustice, but I do consider it is a matter the Council should take up with the Agency.

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Agreed action

54. Within one month of the date of my final decision, the Council has agreed to:

• share and discuss my decision with the Agency, to highlight my concerns about its poor complaint handling;
• ask it to consider what steps it can take to improve this; and
• report back to the Ombudsman with the outcome of this discussion.

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Final decision

55. I have completed my investigation with a finding of fault which did not cause injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman