Decision Date: 15 Aug 2024
Summary
Miss X complained that the Council refused extra care hours for her son, Mr Y and that it had not allocated a social worker. This delayed a care review taking place. The Council was at fault. This caused significant distress to Miss X and her son. The Council agreed to make recommendations to address the injustice caused.
What happened
Miss X and her son, and Mr Y, moved from a different Council in May 2022 to East Sussex.
Although it was noted that Mr Y had 6 days of personal assistance (PA) on his plan, through a direct payment, Miss X said that the arrangement was no longer working because of the distance that would have to be travelled. The Council knew things were not working out as planned for shortly after a care needs assessment was booked for Mr Y in August 2022. Following the assessment, there was some reference to 30 hours of 2:1 support being needed for accessing the community but that was not being used either, because Mr Y did not feel able to go out. It offered 40 hours in total, including one waking night.
The draft plan noted that a referral from the Council had been made as no agencies had any capacity or ability to meet Mr Y’s needs. A PA had been sourced for a £35 ph rate for about 21 hours over the week to build up the bond necessary to do the job. but the panel declined to pay £35 per hour for a PA, drawing the line at an offer of £30. Miss X declined the offer of residential respite, as she thought it was not in Mr Y’s best interests, and the Council said the PA panel would consider the funding request again. A plan for the £35 ph PA was agreed on 31 October 2022 and a review was completed in January 2023, and concluded that things were going well.
Mr Y’s case was reopened on 9 May 2023 following a delay in Mr Y’s case being allocated to a named worker. Miss X requested more care hours, including an overnight once a week and some help in the evenings. The PA was available and willing.
After an allocated worker got in touch, a review took place on 8 June 2023, and an assessment was completed shortly after, noting Mr Y’s high anxiety levels, that Miss X barely got any sleep, had back problems, and Miss X wanted more evening PA slots of 3 hours for Mr Y. A draft care and support plan was completed on 18 July 2023 for 51 hours of PA time but was rejected by the Council’s panel around early August 2023, notably because the panel felt it needed more evidence about the support Mr Y needed, including logs of the needs at night.
The Council rang Miss X in November 2023 and noted that she expressed frustration about more PA hours still not being put in place, given that in the prior Council. Mr Y had qualified for 60 hours of care. That month, the Council noted it was awaiting evidence from Miss Y, but she was never called back as promised by an officer.
The Council said in January 2024 that Mr Y’s case had been allocated to a social worker, who would do a full review. A social worker visited Miss X in late January 2024 and a care needs and a carer’s re-assessments were completed in February 2024. Additional funding was put in for some waking nights in March 2024 with more for April and then reducing again in the May. and finally implemented in April 2024, noting additional waking nights were wanted.
A waking nights assessment was not completed until 13 May 2024, but even then Miss X told the Council she did not think the allocated care agency could adequately meet Mr Y’s needs. She identified previous carers that she had worked with and asked the Council to reconsider.
What was found
The Council should have followed up with Miss X in May 2023 following her request for extra support. There was no evidence to show that Miss X sent the Council the required evidence to support the increase, but the Council also could not show that it followed this up with Miss X. This caused a “drift” and was fault, even though the Council was entitled to ask Miss X for reasonable additional evidence.
The delays attributable to the Council between January 2023 and May 2023 were fault. There was also fault between July 2023 and January 2024, which is when the outcome of the panel and social worker allocation took place respectively. During these delays, the Council said it should have ensured a duty worker or a long-term social worker was available to maintain support. There was a delay between the allocation of a social worker for Mr Y in July 2024 and an initial visit only on 31 January 2024.
The Council acknowledged that it should have completed a core assessment for Mr Y as it had not actually done so. [The report does not say what all the other conversations and discussions amounted to, and this makes the principles for GOOD administration hard to glean from the report itself.]
The LGSCO found the Council’s offer of £500 to Miss X and Mr Y to be appropriate. It also found the additional offer of £3030.30 appropriate, which was intended to address the unmet need during the delay in allocating Mr Y’s case and not following up robustly regarding evidence required by the funding panel to make a decision between 27 July 2023 and 11 April 2024.
The LGSCO could not criticise the Council for arranging care for Mr Y following an assessment in May 2024, even though Miss X had wanted the care to be provided by carers she identified. The Council thought the care was suitable and it was entitled to make that decision but the fact that additional hours had still not been finalised following the assessment on 13 May 2023 caused uncertainty to Miss X as to when Mr Y’s care would be finalised.
Points to note for Councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The LGSCO explicitly limited the report to events after 2023, in terms of a remedy and evaluating injustice caused, because the Council had sent Miss X a copy of the assessment and care plan back in 2022 and it was reasonable to expect the carer to raise her concerns earlier.
Given what she was coping with, that seems to us to be somewhat formulaic. On the other hand, there is no explanation as to why she did not provide logs and a diary as promised.
The report makes no comment about the duty in s37 and s38 of the Care Act to ensure continuity when a person moves from one area to another. Here, it seems as if Mr Y arrived with nothing in place, for reasons one can take no further, given the rather stream of consciousness tone of the report, but East Sussex waited for three months before even arranging an assessment and this would be a breach of the statutory duty, if both Councils were aware of the move.
The Ombudsman makes an interesting point on the onus being on Councils to chase carers. It is not for people to tell Councils what is wrong, because it is part and parcel of their professional duty to make the judgment and ensure that the evidence is available.
There is no explanation as to why £3000 was an appropriate remedy for missing out on a year of extensive care. We think that Miss Y would have been awarded more had she found a legal aid lawyer to bring a claim in the Administrative Court.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s East Sussex County Council (23 015 944) report.
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