Decision Date: 2 June 2024
Summary
Mrs X complained that the Council did not properly discharge its adult social care functions for her and her son, Mr Y. The Council was at fault for being literally unable to provide care for Mr Y’s needs. Mrs X and Mr Y experienced missed care provision and avoidable distress. The Council was told to pay them £1,000 each.
What happened
The report provides an extremely short chronology of events. Mr Y underwent an adult social care needs assessment in 2020, requiring several hours, weekly, of access to the community. He became eligible for funded care in March 2022, but the Council agreed to provide further respite care for him and Mrs X in September 2023.
Mr Y missed about 1000 hours of support over 25 months because the provider who was asked simply had no capacity.
What was found
The Council’s inability to source a care provider for Mr Y was a service failure that caused him to miss care provision, as well as him and Mrs X to experience avoidable distress.
The Council tried to arrange respite provision in October 2023, asking the provider several times until August 2024. The provider could not make provision available in October 2023. While there was some miscommunication between the Council and provider about what information was needed, in October, the LGSCO did not consider this to be fault.
The LGSCO asked the Council to pay Mrs X and Mr Y £1000 each within four months of its decision for the service failure and distress caused.
No money seems to have been spent by Mr Y on meeting his own needs.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups, members of the public
The report is exceptionally brief and may have been of higher quality had the investigator not provided such a condensed chronology of key events. Nonetheless, the report highlights at least two notable points with respect to the findings concerning delayed care and miscommunication.
The very basis of the report’s finding of fault is described as ‘service failure’. But it obviously relates to section 18 of the Care Act 2014, which imposes the duty to meet assessed eligible unmet needs for care and support.
The section says that “a local authority, having made a determination under section 13(1), must meet the adult’s needs for care and support which meet the eligibility criteria” if three conditions are met, which Mr Y did meet as he was found to be eligible for funded care.
A 25-month delay in providing care and therefore meeting eligible needs will clearly be a breach of section 18, but the report touches upon the matter so lightly that not much else can be gleaned by the public as to the consequences for maladministration or illegality concerning what the Council did or did not do.
Based on the report, the Council seemingly did absolutely nothing between March 2022 and September 2023. This would be an appalling omission which warrants a more significant form of underlining than a compensation of £1000 for Mrs X and Mr Y each especially since they each lost the benefit of about 1000 hours of care over 25 months.
As for the report’s finding that the Council was not at fault regarding the miscommunication with the respite provider, it could be argued that the Council’s pro-activity in checking back, was the decisive factor in the LGSCO’s decision.
Again, the report reveals very little, and it is not even evident when Mr Y received his entitlement in the end. Even though he had 25 months of missed care following March 2022, this could lead to the assumption that care commenced in April 2024, but the report goes on to state that the Council requested respite provision in April, July and August 2024, suggesting that this therefore cannot be right, or maybe that Mr Y’s care started but was interrupted, again with no explanation in the report.
What the report seems to suggest, however, is that a Council’s being proactive in contacting a respite provider over the span of 10 months following its agreement to arrange care, even in light of a miscommunication about what information is required for care to take place, will not constitute fault. That would not have been a sustainable finding if there had been a judicial review brought by the person in need; it is a clear breach of the Care Act not to meet the needs, and a duty is a duty.
It would have been more helpful for the report to provide context as to what this meant for Mrs X and Mr Y, as far as missed care hours are concerned, in terms of their legal rights.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Dorset Council (23 012 384) report.
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