Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council dealt with a Deprivation of Liberty decision for Ms A as we would not achieve a worthwhile outcome by doing so.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the way the Council has dealt with a Deprivation of Liberty decision taken for his mother (Ms A), and the information the Council shared about this.
2. Mr X says the Council has caused distress and aggravation and should pay for his mother’s care.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate 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 continue an investigation if we decide we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Ms A was discharged from a hospital and moved into a care home in Spring 2024.
7. In October 2024, Mr X contacted the Council and asked about the assessments it had carried out and the decision it had made about his mother.
8. In March 2025, when the Council had not responded to him, Mr X contacted the Council again.
9. The Council responded to say it had looked at how decisions had been made about Ms A’s care needs. It said the care home had contacted the Council when Ms A moved in, asking it to approve a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard (DoLS) decision. The Council had replied to say it could not open the attachment and asked the care home to resend the application another way.
10. The Council said the application was not re-sent and this was not chased, so the usual process was not followed.
11. The Council apologised that it had not done what it should have done. It also accepted and apologised that it had not always responded to Mr X’s queries.
12. It said it was recruiting a DoLS Administration Officer to follow up on situations like this, to ensure there is not a repeat.
13. The Council said because of its complaint investigation it had also identified a training need which it would address.
14. At the time of the Council’s complaint response, it had carried out the relevant assessments and provided Mr X with copies.
15. When Ms A was eventually assessed, it did not result in a different decision. Therefore, on the balance of probability, had the Council followed the correct process when Ms A was discharged from hospital, the care decisions at that time would have been the same.
16. While it is important the Council follow the correct processes, I am satisfied it has identified where this did not happen, has apologised and carried out service improvements to try to avoid a repeat.
17. Mr X has said the Council did not respond to his follow up questions to its complaint response. Given the acknowledgement that it did not respond to all of his communications before the complaint response, it is disappointing to see this happened again.
18. However, I do not consider we would add to the Council’s investigation outcome if we were to investigate how the DoLS process was dealt with. Where we are not investigating the substantive issue, it would not be proportionate to carry out an investigation specifically into how the complaint was handled.

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Final decision

19. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman