Decision Date: 24 January 2025
Summary
Ms X complained about the Council’s handling of Mrs Y’s care and support needs – through not allocating a social worker for three years and not meeting Mrs Y’s needs for three years, plus poor complaint handling in and of itself.
What happened
Mrs Y has care and support needs. She had a care and support package and care workers visited her home several times a day. Prior to April 2023, she moved house to another council area. She was not allocated a social worker by the new social work team.
Ms X contacted the Council in May 2023, requesting an update to the care plan for Mrs Y. [The report does not state a reason for this request].
In July 2023, a social worker visited Mrs Y at home with Ms X, and a representative from Mrs Y’s care agency provider. [No other information is stated in the report regarding the purpose of this visit.]
Between July 2023 and February 2024, Ms X was in contact with the duty social workers about the increased needs of Mrs Y. The Council’s website advised that if the individual’s needs or finances change, they should get in touch with their social worker. If they do not have a social worker or do not know their contact details, then the person should contact the Council instead. The Council stated that they will then arrange for their social worker or another member of their team to call back.
In February 2024, Ms X made a formal complaint about the lack of an allocated social worker as well as a lack of any updated care or review documentation for Mrs Y. The Council apologised to Ms X for the service it provided to Mrs Y in March 2024.
The apology accepted Mrs Y’s main contact for social work support was the ‘Duty’ telephone number. It agreed with Ms X the best action would be to allocate a social worker to complete a review of Mrs Y’s needs.
Ms X then escalated her complaint to the Council’s stage two. In both its stage one and stage two complaint acknowledgements, the Council told Ms X it aimed to respond within 20 working days and would update her if it needed longer to complete its investigation. It took 25 working days to respond to her stage one complaint and had contacted her during its investigation with an update, apologising for its delay. It responded to her stage two complaint within the agreed timescale.
In April 2024, in response to Ms X’s complaint, the Council agreed Mrs Y had not received consistent social work support which it accepted was inappropriate. It told Ms X this was due to unfilled vacancies in the social work team to which Mrs Y was allocated. It further told Ms X that it had allocated a new social worker to Mrs Y’s case who would review her care needs. The new allocated social worker visited Mrs Y and Ms X to introduce themselves in late April 2024.
A meeting to formally review Mrs Y’s care and support plan was set for mid-May.
The Council had not yet issued a reviewed care and support plan for Mrs Y even by the time of the report, which was January 2025.
Ms X made a separate complaint about the contents of the proposed reviewed care plan. She said her new complaint concerned the proposed reduced hours of care in Mrs Y’s reviewed care and support plan.
What was found
Lack of allocated social worker
There is no legal requirement for Councils to allocate social workers to individuals in its adult social care service. The Council’s website also provided advice for the position whereby someone’s needs have changed, if they do not have an allocated social worker.
The LGSCO stated that the Council had done enough for discharge of its duty to provide information and advice to Mrs Y and found no fault with the Council’s decision-making not to allocate a social worker. This was despite the Council later acknowledging that a social worker should have been allocated.
Care and support needs
The LGSCO stated that the Council said its social worker completed a review of Mrs Y’s needs during their visit in July 2023 despite the Council’s records not supporting this assertion.
The Council had last reviewed Mrs Y’s care and support plan prior to April 2023. The statutory guidance recommends that Councils review care and support plans at least every 12 months.
Furthermore, Ms X requested a review of Mrs Y’s care plan in May 2023 and nearly 2 years later, the Council was yet to issue its findings on the review, which was fault.
It was noted by the LGSCO that the Council asserted that the delay in issuing a reviewed plan was due to the repeated rearranging by Ms X and long-term staff sickness. The LGSCO noted that Ms X had contributed to the delay in the Council completing the review process meaning that any injustice to Ms X was limited.
The LGSCO accepted that a review meeting had now been completed; however, the Council has not yet issued a reviewed care and support plan even now. It says this is because Ms X disagrees with the contents of the plan. Ideally, a Council will issue a plan which is agreed by the Council and the person and their carer. However, to avoid delay and meet its statutory duty, the LGSCO recommended that the Council should have issued the plan and addressed Ms X’s concerns through its appeal process, although there is no information on whether the council picked this avenue to address Ms X’s concerns.
Regarding the proposed cuts to care, the LGSCO noted that any delay in the Council completing its review would actually have caused Mrs Y to access more hours of care than she would have done if the Council had completed its review on time. Thus, the injustice was considered to be limited.
The nature of the contacts with the Duty line between 2023 and 2024 were requests for the Council to meet Mrs Y’s increased needs. The LGSCO stated that the documents seen showed the duty social work team responded to Ms X promptly and addressed each concern she outlined, with the exception of not following up on her request for a review of Mrs Y’s care and support plan in May 2023, contrary to the Care Act 2014 and Care and Support Statutory Guidance.
Complaints procedures
Although the stage 1 complaint response was slightly beyond the published timescale, the LGSCO did not consider the delay sufficient to constitute fault. In addition, no fault with the Council’s handling of Ms X’s complaint at the second stage of the process was found.
Agreed action
Within four weeks of the LGSCO final decision, the Council agreed to:
- issue the reviewed care and support plan without additional delay.
- provide a written apology to Mrs Y for the delay issuing her care and support plan.
- remind its staff about the importance and duty of considering reasonable requests for care and support plan reviews from any person acting on behalf of an adult.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
Delay in allocating social worker
The Care Act 2014 gives local authorities a duty to provide information and advice. This duty underpins and should inform any contact or intervention that the local authority has with the person. Local authorities need to provide comprehensive information and advice about care and support services in their local area. This is to help people to understand how care and support services work, the care and funding options available, and how people can access services.
Whilst councils do not have a specific legal duty to appoint a social worker, they do have a duty to ensure that a person’s needs are met in a timely manner, and this will often involve assigning a social worker in cases where the person is likely to require more complex support, simply because of the underlying fundamental requirement of competence to assess and process the assessment of needs through to a rational and appropriate response.
This report does not state the specific needs of Ms Y, apart from recognising that they were believed to have ‘increased’. Given that a social worker was eventually allocated to Ms Y the facts suggest that she was in need of a social worker all along.
We cannot understand why the Council did not allocate some other sort of worker, unless it was because they simply had nobody who could operate under the Care Act with a claim to basic competence.
Care and support needs
The irony of the report is that the Council’s delay in implementing the proposed cuts meant that the person drawing on care did not feel the effect of the cut at all – Leeds stuck to the law that it could not effect a cut until it had done a care plan arising out of the review.
There is no suggestion that Mrs X knew that she was ‘playing the Council at its own game’, by ensuring that there were reasons for the delay on her side, as well, so as to put off the implementation of the cut. This was not someone who seems to have understood that it is in fact the law that the Council cannot change the care plan until after it has finished the section 27 process. But it underlines in a very clear way that the failure of management to ensure that the workforce funded by the Council are funded for sufficiency as per the duty in s6 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 which is still in force.
Sections 24 and 25 of the Care Act 2014 are clear on the need to DELIVER a care plan even if one is not agreed as long as all practicable steps have been taken to reach agreement. The stance that a council was ‘trying to agree’ something has been a long-running example of social work management not understanding that being person centred does not mean not doing anything until something has been agreed! Care law on this goes back to 1998!
When preparing the plan, the council must involve any carer the adult has for the simple reason that if the carer is not willing and able to meet eligible needs then the Council must step up. The plan must also include a personal budget, which is the cost the council rationally believes will be sufficient to cover arrangements for care and support for that person’s remaining unmet eligible needs.
The law is clear as to the need for regular review, calling it keeping plans under review ‘generally’.
s27 Review of care and support plan or of support plan
(1) A local authority must—
(a) keep under review generally care and support plans, and support plans, that it has prepared, and
(b) on a reasonable request by or on behalf of the adult to whom a care and support plan relates or the carer to whom a support plan relates, review the plan.
Paragraph 13.32 of the Care and Support Statutory Guidance states that a review of an ongoing care and support plan is expected to take place no less than once every 12 months.
Councils must conduct a review if an adult or a person acting on the adult’s behalf makes a reasonable request for one.
Council complaints procedure
Councils should have clear procedures to deal with social care complaints. Both the relevant Regulations, which leave the design up to them within defined parameters, and the Guidance say they should investigate and resolve complaints quickly and efficiently. A single stage procedure should be enough.
More information can be found here: The Local Authority Social Services and National Health Service Complaints (England) Regulations 2009
There is a legitimate expectation that any Council should adhere to the standards it sets out for itself (here, on its website) as doing anything otherwise would amount to the Council conveying misleading information.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Leeds City Council (24 002 371) report.
If you are affected by the issues in this report, please consider asking a free, one-off question, anonymously, at a level of principle, here. Our experts’ response will give you an opinion which may then help you and the broader community, when posted.
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