Case Ref: 20 005 906 Category: Children's care services Sub Category: Looked after children

• The Council will provide us with evidence of how the Council will ensure that its officers/social work staff keep proper records when they pick up belongings for looked after children including a list of items collected and confirmation that they were handed on to the child;
• The Council will provide evidence of how it will improve record keeping in relation to ensuring that there is a clear record of who is invited to looked after child reviews and who attends. If a child does not attend there should be a record of the pre and post discussion between the social worker and/or the IRO and the child;
• The Council will consider whether a specific process is necessary to ensure that the belongings of looked after children are properly tracked and audited and provide evidence of this consideration and the outcome of this;
• The Council will ensure that there is a process in place to ensure that where there is a need to change a child’s social worker this is managed properly and where at all possible the child is properly informed about this in advance, and provide us with evidence of how it will put this in place;
• The Council will introduce a procedure to ensure that complaints accepted under the statutory children’s complaints procedure are tracked and that complainants are responded to according to the statutory timetable and enabled to progress through the three stages of that procedure.

Case Ref: 20 004 323 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Residential care

• The Council should carry out a quality monitoring visit. The Council should ensure: all residents it places in the Care Home have up to date assessments and comprehensive care plans; the Care Home is doing frequent checks to make sure pressure mattresses are plugged in, switched on and is documenting those checks; all staff at the Care Home are properly documenting repositioning for those residents who require it.
• Ensure all staff at the care home have had appropriate training in identifying the signs of increased risk of developing pressure sores.

Case Ref: 20 002 304 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council has agreed to to take steps to ensure it completes the EHCP process within the required timescales.

Case Ref: 20 001 594 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council will develop a local policy on alternative provision for children who cannot attend school because of health needs. This should outline how different services will work together to meet pupils needs.
• The Council will ensure the information on its website on complaint handling matches its local procedure.
• The Council will provide an update on lessons the Council has learned from the faults identified in this statement and what it has done to minimise the chances of a reoccurrence.

Case Ref: 20 001 238 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Direct payments

• The Council has also confirmed to the Ombudsman that it has made service improvements to the direct payments process. This includes the development of a direct payments policy. The Council is also introducing new template letters when a request is made for direct payments to ensure it has clearly recorded outcomes with rationale for decision making. A programme of training for all adult social work teams has also started to embed these improvements.

Case Ref: 20 000 190 Category: Housing Sub Category: Private housing

• Ensure it has proper systems in place to be certain sufficient case notes are recorded.

Case Ref: 19 018 549 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council accepted it did not have a procedure for staff or guidance on how they should protect property belonging to homeless applicants. It has agreed to within prepare and issued guidance and a procedure.

Case Ref: 19 018 175 Category: Education Sub Category: Other

• For the Council to amend its procedures so it involves the Virtual Headteacher when looked after and previously looked after children are having problems in their placements.

Case Ref: 19 011 899 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Residential care

• The Council will provide a copy of the briefing provided to all relevant staff about the quality of accident reporting both in terms of RIDDOR and around the quality of the information being included in accident reports.
• The Council will review its own record keeping procedures to ensure an adequate record of key meetings and interviews completed during complaint investigations is maintained.