Decision Date: 12 September 2024
Summary
Mr X, acting on behalf of Mrs Y, raised a complaint that the Council had overcharged for her care services, resulting in financial loss for Mrs Y.
What happened
In September 2022, after Mrs Y was discharged from hospital, the Council assessed her care needs and recommended a 28-hour per week care package.
Soon after that, Mr X, who was Mrs Y’s son, began voicing concerns to the provider, about the quality and timekeeping of the provision and whether she truly required the full 28 hours of assistance.
Although he addressed these issues with the care provider in September, he escalated his concerns to the Council in November, citing both the care level’s adequacy and appropriateness.
In response, the Council conducted a review over the phone, resulting in a reduction of Mrs Y’s care hours from 28 to 14 per week. However, as her needs evolved, further reviews led to subsequent reductions to 8.75 hours per week in January 2023, and again to 7 hours per week in July 2023.
These adjustments reflected ongoing assessments of Mrs Y’s needs and aimed to align the care provided with her evolving condition, although the timing and communication around these changes raised concerns about the Council’s responsiveness and accuracy in care planning.
What was found
Redbridge was found at fault for failing to conduct a timely review of Mrs Y’s care needs, resulting in incorrect care charges.
The Council needed to apologise and recalculate Mrs Y’s care charges for the period all the way back to 7 September 2022 to 25 December 2022, on top of the Council’s own offer to recalculate to that level for the year between December 2022 and 2023, based on 7 hours per week.
In terms of lessons learned, the Council has set up 2 weekly meetings to review new complaints in the system for Adult Social Care and put in place a new process between the Financial Assessments & Collections Team and the Contracts Team to flag up to officers dealing with complaints that a complaint relates to invoice queries.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups, members of the public
Redbridge’s delayed response to Mr X’s initial concerns and subsequent care reassessments led to significant discrepancies in Mrs Y’s care hours delivery AND in the nexus between what she needed and what she got.
Public law dictates councils are to act promptly in their statutory obligations even when there is no specific time limit, such as with reviews flagged by relatives on account of a change in circumstances, ensuring care levels continue to reflect the client’s current needs. Section 27 makes it clear that as long as the request is reasonable, the review is a duty.
Here, while Mr X was properly informed of the care package’s chargeable nature, he raised concerns that it did not align with Mrs Y’s actual needs. The Council’s obligation is not only to clarify costs upfront but also to make necessary adjustments transparently when conditions change, preventing overcharging.
An additional puzzle is that the investigator said nothing about reablement status, although Mrs Y was clearly someone with potential for reablement because she so quickly required less and less care but it may have been left out because there was simply no issue with the delivery of up to 6 weeks’ free care after leaving hospital in the first place.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s London Borough of Redbridge (23 020 054) report.
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