Summary: Mrs Y complained about the way the Council dealt with her late father, and its decision to accept his refusal to share information about his care with the family. The Ombudsman has discontinued the investigation into the complaint. This is because most of Mrs Y’s complaint is late, the injustice during the limited period we could investigate is not significant enough to justify our continued involvement and we cannot achieve a different outcome for Mr X.

The complaint

1. Mrs Y complained about the way the Council dealt with her late father, Mr X. She brought the complaint on his behalf, as executor of his estate, and also on her own behalf.
2. She says the Council was wrong to accept Mr X’s refusal to consent to its adult social care team sharing information about his care with her. Its failure to engage left Mr X vulnerable, affected her ability to help him, and their relationship, at an already difficult time.
3. She also complained the Council refused to engage with her when she formally challenged its decision after Mr X’s death.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. 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’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to continue with an investigation if we believe it is unlikely we would find fault, the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or it is unlikely further investigation would lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26A (6), 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 has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
6. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures if we have decided not to investigate the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

7. I spoke to Mrs Y and considered all the information she and the Council have provided about the complaint.
8. I invited Mrs Y and the Council to comment on a draft version of this decision. I considered their responses before making my final decision.

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What I found

What happened

9. Mrs Y has told us Mr X had dementia and became increasingly confused towards the end of his life. In April 2019 a medical consultant diagnosed Mr X with moderately severe dementia and advised Mrs Y he would support an application by her to the Court of Protection. In the event, I understand Mrs Y did not proceed with an application.
10. The Council’s adult social care team was responsible for assessing and monitoring Mr X’s care. The Council told Mrs Y and the family it could not share information about his care with them because he had refused to give consent for this.
11. In August 2019 Mrs Y’s sister contacted the Council with safeguarding concerns about Mr X. The Council says it told her sister Mr X’s social worker would visit him to discuss the concerns. And it followed its safeguarding procedures and worked with the police to investigate these matters.
12. Mr X died in February 2020.
13. Mrs Y complained to the Council in May 2020 about its decision not to communicate with her about Mr X’s care. In response the Council said:

• When its staff visited Mr X, they regularly asked if he would agree to information being shared with the family, but he consistently refused.
• On each occasion he refused, staff had no concerns about his ability to make this specific decision. They were satisfied Mr X had capacity to make decisions regarding the sharing of his personal information.
• Although Mr X had passed away, it could not share his information with her because it still had to respect his wishes and its duty of confidentiality. It assured her it had followed its departmental policies and procedures in exercising its safeguarding duties during its intervention with Mr X.
• Mrs Y was unhappy with the Council’s response and brought the complaint to us in January 2021.

Analysis – should we continue with the investigation?

14. The complaint is about the Council’s decisions not to share Mr X’s information with Mrs Y in the period from 2019 until his death in February 2020. Mrs Y did not bring her complaint to us until January 2021. I do not consider there is a good reason for her not bringing the complaint to us sooner. On this basis, if we continued the investigation, we would only look at events which took place from January 2020 to February 2020, when Mr X passed away.
15. I appreciate what Mrs Y has told us about the distress and difficulties caused by the Council’s decision not to share information about Mr X with her. But I do not consider any injustice caused to Mrs Y during this limited period (January to February 2020) is significant enough to justify our continued involvement.
16. And sadly, following his death in February 2020, we will not be able to achieve any different outcome for Mr X now through further investigation of the complaint.
17. The Council provided a detailed response to Mrs Y’s complaint in July 2020. I appreciate Mrs Y was not satisfied with this. But, as I have decided to discontinue the investigation into the substantive part of Mrs Y complaint, it is not a good use of public resources to investigate her complaint about the Council’s complaint handling.

Final decision

18. I have discontinued my investigation. This is because most of Mrs Y’s complaint is late, the injustice during the limited period we could investigate is not significant enough to justify our continued involvement and we cannot achieve a different outcome for Mr X.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman