Decision Date: 24 February 2025
Summary
Miss X complained that the Council failed to provide the care she needed to participate in her education, even though it had acknowledged she required support outside the home. As a result, she struggled to attend university lectures, experienced significant distress, and her health, wellbeing, and academic progress were negatively affected.
What happened
In early 2023, Miss X’s care plan provided her with five 45-minute care calls each week and a further six hours of care time per week to enable her to access the swimming pool or gym twice weekly. She had medical issues that are not specified in the report and she appears to have been a wheelchair user.
In late August 2023, Miss X contacted the Council to say that she was returning to university and would require a reassessment of her care needs to help her attend and participate in her education.
The following day, the Council spoke to Miss X’s representative, acknowledging that additional time with her Personal Assistant (PA) would be necessary to support her at university.
It was explained that a social worker would need to be assigned to look into this further.
She chased the Council for updates in late September and again in early October 2023.
The Council claimed it attempted to call her but was unable to make contact.
Over October and November, both Miss X and her representative made several further attempts to get an update. According to the Council’s own records, a social worker was finally allocated in early November, and a home visit was scheduled for the end of that month (she was due to start back at university in the January.)
During the home visit, Miss X explained that she needed more hours to accommodate university attendance and additional swimming sessions. She highlighted that the buses often ran late, which meant her PA was frequently required to work beyond the allocated time. She also explained that due to medical conditions, it was necessary for her PA to accompany her to university. She described how the university environment was not fully accessible for someone in a wheelchair.
In response, the Council contacted the university in early December to inquire about the support available for students with physical disabilities.
The university stated that while it could provide academic support and help with learning needs, and that students could apply for Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA), the kind of care Miss X required—such as assistance with personal needs and medical support—was typically beyond its remit. The Council then advised Miss X’s partner that she should apply for DSA to cover the presence of a PA or chaperone. However, her partner informed the Council that Miss X had already done so and was using the DSA to fund transport to and from university.
In mid-December 2023, the Council formally informed Miss X’s partner that it would not fund PA hours for the purpose of medical supervision at university. It did, however, agree to increase her PA hours for swimming sessions.
Dissatisfied with the response, Miss X’s partner requested to speak with a senior social worker. The Council responded that a senior officer had already reviewed the case and upheld the decision. A second request for senior-level involvement in late December received the same reply, with the Council advising Miss X to file a formal complaint if she remained unhappy.
In early February 2024, the Council attempted to set up a joint meeting with Miss X, the university, and Council representatives.
Her partner declined, stating that the university had already provided all the support it could and that such a meeting would be unproductive.
The Council agreed to review the matter with a manager. After further chasing by Miss X’s partner in late February, the Council repeated its previous advice without offering any new solutions.
Frustrated by the lack of resolution, Miss X submitted a formal complaint in March 2024. She raised concerns that the Council had failed to provide appropriate care, offered incorrect information about responsibilities, and had not appropriately escalated her case to senior staff.
The Council issued its response in June 2024, acknowledging there had been unacceptable delays in communication and apologised for not returning calls from Miss X’s representative. As a partial remedy, it offered to backdate care funding by £595.80 to cover a short-term 12-week period of increased hours to support her while discussions were ongoing.
Following this, Miss X’s partner submitted a second complaint. It disputed several points in the Council’s complaint response and argued that no clear reasons had been given for refusing to fund additional hours. In mid-July 2024, the Council responded at stage two of the complaints process. While it maintained its position regarding funding, it offered an additional £250 for the time and trouble caused to Miss X during the process.
A fresh assessment of Miss X’s needs was conducted in November 2024, and a new funding request was submitted. However, the Council again refused to approve additional care hours, stating that the support Miss X needed was the responsibility of the university or should be covered by DSA. In response, Miss X’s partner submitted letters from both the university and the DSA, dated December 2023, clearly stating that the Council was responsible for providing care support.
Despite this, the Council formally closed the funding request in December 2024, maintaining that the additional hours did not qualify as care needs under its criteria.
What was found
Birmingham City Council was found at fault for significant delays in responding to Miss X’s communications regarding her care needs assessment and support planning.
This failure caused Miss X avoidable distress and frustration. To remedy this injustice, the Ombudsman recommended that within one month the Council should write to Miss X to apologise; pay her £400 to recognise the distress and frustration caused; and issue a written reminder to staff about the importance of responding to communications within a reasonable timeframe.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
All the report focuses on is the delay in starting and finishing the assessment of needs in the autumn of 2023.
This complaint report does highlight the importance of councils responding to service users’ communications in a timely and meaningful manner, particularly where care assessments and support plans are concerned. Staff should be regularly reminded of the duty to treat communications from the public with seriousness and urgency.
The Council’s position was that it could not fund hours for a PA to sit with Miss X just in case she had a medical issue or because the university was not wheelchair friendly.
We are not in a position to make a judgment call about that because there’s no information about the nature of Miss X’s disability, illness or condition – or the significance of the risks she was expecting to materialise. It would not have been acceptable to refuse to fund simply on the basis that the issue was a medical one.
However, the refusal on the part of the investigator to engage with that stance reiterates that the Ombudsman does not act as an appeal body.
It does not review the merits of a council’s decision, even if the service user or advocate disagrees with the outcome. Instead, the LGSCO examines whether the correct process was followed. This is a vital point to understand: complaints must focus not on whether a council made the “right” decision, but whether it made the decision lawfully, fairly, and reasonably, following proper procedures. A lawful but harsh decision will not be overturned merely because it feels wrong; only unlawful, unreasonable, or procedurally flawed decisions are actionable through the Ombudsman.
However, the partner’s complaint had specifically raised the issue that the Council had not given reasons for why it would not fund extra hours and that does raise the procedural issue about whether the Council was simply afraid to set a precedent or was fettering its discretion, or taking a narrow view of the evidence about the nature and severity of the risk.
Finally, a noteworthy point arises regarding the “DSA allowance” (Disabled Students’ Allowances), which Miss X mentioned in her communications. Although the DSA is a separate entitlement administered through higher education channels rather than local authorities, councils must understand that individuals may have a patchwork of needs and supports, and councils should not treat the existence of a DSA as negating their own duties under the Care Act 2014.
Each funding stream has its own criteria and purposes; DSA is intended to assist with study-related costs, not replace social care support required to meet eligible needs.
Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) is support to cover the study-related costs you have because of a mental health problem, long-term illness or any other disability. DSA is intended to supplement the provision of reasonable adjustments made by the Higher Education Provider but is not available in place of the reasonable adjustments. DSA is not intended to assist with disability-related expenditure that the student would incur if they were not following their course of study, nor is it intended to cover the study costs a student may incur. It covers a note taker, in terms of human assistance, but that is not the same as personal care. Local Authority social services may well continue to provide assistance to personal care costs.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Birmingham City Council (24 007 865) report.
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