Summary: We will not investigate Mr B’s late complaint about the way the Council considered his complaint about Mrs C’s Care Provider. This is because there is not enough evidence of the Council’s actions causing a significant injustice to either Mr B or Mrs C to warrant an Ombudsman investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr B complained the Council failed to properly investigate his allegations of assault against Mrs C, by her Care provider, who insisted a District Nurse administer treatment when she did not agree to it and he as her attorney had not consented to it doing so.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
3. The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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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.
6. I considered Mr B’s comments before making a final decision.

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My assessment

7. The Council says there was a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) in place detailing it was in Mrs C’s best interests to have all medication administered covertly including the Covid vaccine, although it noted Mrs C did not refuse to have this.
8. The Council says Mr B reported in December 2020 an incident alleging Mrs C had been assaulted by staff in May 2019, when District Nurses gave her an injection against her will, which caused her severe distress.
9. The Council considered Mr B’s allegations under its responsibility for Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults. The Council found no evidence of Mrs C being assaulted on the date Mr B alleged assault took place. It said records showed Mrs C was compliant with taking her injection on that date. The Council says District Nurse records did not show any evidence that Mrs C was retrained against her wishes. The Council considered Mr B’s allegation under its responsibility for safeguarding adults and found no evidence Mrs C was restrained or distressed. We could not add to this.
10. Mr B says the safeguarding investigation contains inaccuracies and incorrect information. The Council has confirmed the safeguarding enquiry is currently being reviewed with additional queries being made by the Organisational Safeguards Team as an independent view. We could not achieve any more than this even if we investigated and there is no significant injustice to either Mr B or Mrs C from the actions of the Council warranting an Ombudsman investigation.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate this late complaint. This is because there is no significant injustice to either Mr B or Mrs C to warrant an Ombudsman investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman