The Council has agreed to take action to ensure that complaints on behalf of people who have died, are accepted and dealt with through its complaints process. I am satisfied the Council has already completed this through its actions with the staff member who wrongly declined to investigate the complaint.The Council has agreed to review its safeguarding procedures to clarify how to deal with concerns about potential abuse to a person who has since died. I am satisfied that the Council’s proposal to ask for this to be included in the Local Government Association Peer Review of Safeguarding is appropriate

The Council has agreed to produce an action plan that will seek to learn wider lessons from this complaint. This will consider: a) whether its current care plans for learning disabled adults are sufficiently clear in identifying what travel needs they have which form part of their overall assessed care needs and how practice in this area can be improved; b) whether its existing contracting and monitoring arrangements provide enough clarity for care providers on what the Council's expectations are when it comes to meeting travel costs as part of the contract for an individual's care; it should consider in what circumstances a care provider could be justified in asking the user of services to pay an additional charge for travel or transport; c) whether learning disabled adults it is supporting in residential care settings (or their representatives) are being given enough information on what care the Council is paying for and what additional charges may be made by a care provider for services that do not form part of the package of careThe Council has agreed it will review the practice of the Care Provider in this case to ascertain: a) if other residents and/or their representatives have been provided with clear information setting out what services the Care Provider is providing as part of their package of care and what further expenses the Provider might incur on behalf of residents which will be the residents’ responsibility to fund; if not then the Council will look to ensure they receive that information; b) ascertain if other users have been billed for use of a vehicle as the complainant in this case and if so, what money the Provider has received from them; the Council will then review if those charges are reasonable and following the principles outlined in this decision statement seek a refund for those residents if appropriate; c) ensure any new policy introduced by the care provider to ask residents to pay towards the use of a vehicle at the care home takes account of the principles set out in this statement on where the Provider might legitimately make charges for transport costs.