Summary: Mrs B, complains for her adult disabled son, Mr C, about the actions of the Council about his care and safeguarding. The Ombudsman finds no fault by the Council.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mrs B, complains for her adult disabled son, Mr C, about the actions of the Council in respect of his care and safeguarding.
2. Specifically, she complains about:

• the safeguarding investigations the Council carried out;
• the actions of the Council when she reported injuries to her son when he left his supported living placement in October 2018; and
• the lack of a care plan for her son on his return to live with her.

3. She also complains about:

• the lack of support from the Council in 2016 when her son was excluded from school; and
• how her son was treated in his supported living placement between June 2017 and October 2018.

4. Mrs B complains that her son suffered injuries which the Council failed to properly investigate.

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What I have investigated

5. I have investigated how the Council conducted its safeguarding investigations.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

6. 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)
7. 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)
8. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
9. 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

10. I considered all the information provided by Mrs B about her complaint. I made written enquiries of the Council and took account of all the information and evidence it provided in response.
11. Mrs B and the Council had the opportunity to comment on a draft of this decision. I considered all comments received in reply.

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What I found

Legal and administrative background

Safeguarding

12. The Care Act 2014 sets out a framework for local authorities to protect adults at risk of abuse or neglect.
13. A council must make necessary enquiries if it has reason to think a person may be at risk of abuse or neglect and has needs for care and support which mean he or she cannot protect himself or herself. It must also decide whether it or another person or agency should take any action to protect the person from abuse or risk. (section 42, Care Act 2014)
14. After the enquiry is complete, the authority should consider what, if any, action is appropriate.

Best interest decision making

15. A key principle of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 is that any act done for, or any decision made on behalf of a person who lacks capacity must be in that person’s best interests. Section 4 of the Act provides a checklist of steps that decision makers must follow to determine what is in a person’s best interests. The decision maker also must consider if there is a less restrictive choice available that can achieve the same outcome. If there is a conflict about what is in a person’s best interests, and all efforts to resolve the dispute have failed, the court of protection might need to decide what is in the person’s best interests.

What happened in this case

Background and the current position

16. Mr C, an adult, is disabled due to autism. Following a best interest decision that he should have supported accommodation with 24-hour staff support, from June 2017 his usual place of residence was a supported living placement provided by Respond Care. The placement was initially proposed as emergency respite, but it was extended until a permanent supported living arrangement was agreed. A best interests decision made in April 2018 concluded Mr C should stay at the placement. That decision followed action by the care provider in December 2017 to service notice on Mr C, because of difficulties caused by Mrs B in her interactions with the placement staff. There was a further best interests meeting in August 2018 to inform a decision about the duration and frequency of future visits for Mr C to the family home: it was noted there was conflict between Mrs B and the professionals involved in Mr C’s support about what was in his best interests in this regard.
17. In October 2018 Mr C went home for a planned visit but then did not return to the supported living accommodation. He has remained at the family home since that time.

The Council’s safeguarding actions

18. There were three safeguarding alerts raised in respect of Mrs B’s concerns about her son’s care in 2018.
19. In the first of these, 11 specific concerns were raised by Mrs C, which in summary covered the following issues:

• A lack of activities in the home for Mr C;
• That Mr C was losing weight and appeared hungry; he was sometimes dressed in dirty clothes and had dirty bedlinen;
• That staff were over-medicating Mr C;
• That Mr C was not receiving support from two carers at a time, which Mrs B felt he needed.
• That unreasonable restrictions were being placed on Mrs B’s visits to her son, such as a requirement to give notice, and that her requests to allow Mr C to have visits to the family home were not being met; and
• That another resident had moved into the accommodation and his noisy behaviour caused concerns for Mr C.

20. The Council decided that the criteria for a safeguarding enquiry were met, but also noted that some of the points had been raised previously by Mrs B or by the care provider and had been previously considered in 2017. In addition, it was noted that prior to the safeguarding alert having been raised in 2018, some action had been taken relating to some of Mrs B’s concerns, including transition planning for Mr C to have visits home, and recommendations associated with Mrs B’s visits to the supported living placement and her behaviour when visiting.
21. The Council’s records show that it set about gathering information to inform the safeguarding investigation, carrying out visits and seeking evidence relevant to the various points of enquiry. Having gathered and considered relevant information, the Council reached its conclusions on each of the eleven concerns which had been raised. None were found to be substantiated.
22. The second safeguarding alert raised by Mrs B concerned two marks to Mr C’s body, in July 2018. The Council considered photographs Mrs B had provided and carried out a visit to the care provider, who said the marks were believed to be chafing caused by Mr C’s new swim shorts a few days earlier: the provider had a completed a body map showing three marks, which had been monitored and were now almost completely faded. Having considered the matter, the Council concluded that the threshold for a full safeguarding investigation was not met in this case.
23. The third safeguarding alert was raised by Mrs B during a meeting in September 2018. The records from that meeting note that an explanation was given of the safeguarding procedures followed, the range and types of information that were considered in the investigation and the outcome, which was that all 11 concerns in this case were found to be unsubstantiated.
24. Mrs B was unhappy with this and then went on at the same meeting to report a new concern, about what she thought could be a cigarette burn to her son. She showed photographs on her phone which she said had been taken more than four weeks previously but had not shared sooner as she had been on holiday. The Council says she was asked to send the photographs in by email, but it has no record of receiving them from her. However, Mrs B then also made the same complaint to the care provider and the matter was raised as a safeguarding alert. As Mrs B had been advised to report her concern about this matter to the police and did so, the Council also received information from them about this. However, the police decided there was no evidence to substantiate claims made by Mrs B and so no further action followed.

Analysis

25. It is not the Ombudsman’s role to question professional judgment of the Council’s officers unless there is procedural fault. The evidence shows that the Council acted promptly and appropriately in response to safeguarding concerns raised by Mrs B. It took the relevant action to gather information and evidence and to consider it. The Council’s actions were not affected by procedural fault calling into question the outcome of its safeguarding investigations.

Additional matters raised by Mrs B

26. As well as complaining about the safeguarding investigations, Mrs B has raised concerns about the following points:

• The impact of building works at the supported living accommodation on Mr C in the summer of 2018;
• The actions of the care provider associated with Mr C’s benefit income when he returned to live in the family home in October 2018; and
• Care and support planning for Mr C when he returned to live in the family home.

Building works

27. Mrs B reports that for several months in 2018 the supported living accommodation was being extended and that prevented Mr C from having access to the garden, as well as being detrimental to him as he is noise sensitive. She also reports that when building works were completed there were two weeks during which decorating was done, causing a smell affecting Mr C’s asthma. Mrs B considers her son should have been moved out of the accommodation while this work was all done.
28. The evidence I have seen shows that Mrs B and the Council were notified in March 2018 about the proposed building works, but I have not seen any evidence that she raised the issue of access to the garden until the end of July when it was mentioned in an email. At this point the social worker telephoned Mrs B to discuss various matters but the issue was not mentioned again by Mrs B. The Council has said there appears to be no record of Mrs B complaining to it about paint fumes, and it was not part of any safeguarding enquiry, but in any event the accommodation is effectively a domestic home requiring decoration and any smell of paint would dissipate over a couple of days.
29. I have seen no evidence that there was fault by the Council (or the care provider acting on its behalf) in this matter.

Financial matters

30. Mrs B reports that when her son returned to live with her in October 2018 the provider kept two weeks of his benefit money.
31. The Council says that when Mr C first returned to the family home the intention was for this to be a short stay visit, but Mr C did not return to the placement and remained at home with his mother. While Mr C was expected to return, the supported living placement remained available to him and his belongings were still there. The provider states that it never had control of Mr C’s finances: his monies were paid to Mrs B, and there was a standing order to the placement to pay toward Mr C’s bills there. The standing order was not cancelled for two weeks after he went home in October 2018. The Council has not noted any concerns from professionals that the provider owed any money to Mr C, and some records indicate that his account was in fact in arrears.
32. However, this matter does not appear to have been through the Council’s complaints procedure and if Mrs B still takes the view that money is owed, it would be reasonable for her to pursue this with the Council as a fresh complaint.

Care and support planning

33. Mrs B reports that Mr C did not have a care plan in place when he returned to live with her.
34. The evidence shows that Mr C did have an up to date care plan in place for his accommodation at the supported living placement, and there was also a transition plan for overnight stays at the family home in September and October 2018. However, as has already been noted, Mr C did not return from his home visit to the supported living accommodation as planned. A review and a revised care and support plan was subsequently completed in January 2019.
35. Given that Mr C was supposed to be returning to the supported living setting, the time taken to complete a revised care plan to reflect his change of accommodation is not unreasonable, and neither does it appear to have significantly disadvantaged Mr C.

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Final decision

36. I find no fault by the Council in the matters investigated here. I have completed my investigation.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

37. I did not investigate Mrs B’s complaint about lack of support from the Council in 2016 when her son was excluded from school, or about how her son was treated in his supported living placement from June 2017 onwards except where this related to the safeguarding matters raised and investigated as set out above. For the most part, those events took place too long ago. As set out at paragraph 6 above, we normally expect a person to approach us within 12 months of knowing something has happened which affects them. Mrs B could have approached the Ombudsman sooner and it would have been reasonable for her to have done so. For this reason, I do not consider these matters should be investigated now.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman