Date of decision: 29 May 2025
Summary
Wiltshire Council failed to provide a disabled adult with social care support following a clear needs assessment and eligibility decision, causing avoidable distress and isolation for her and her family. The Council’s approach to care planning did not account for how all the eligible needs would be met, resulting in a decline in the woman’s health.
What happened
A parent, Miss Y, approached the Council in January 2024 seeking a care needs assessment for her adult daughter, Miss W, who experienced multiple mental health conditions and required support at home.
The Council conducted an assessment, provided advice on funding for housing adaptations, and recommended an ‘Intensive Enablement’ service for 12 weeks to help Miss W work towards specific goals. The conclusion suggested “without the studio being completed [Miss W] does not feel any other goals are achievable at present and does not wish to explore a personal assistant through a direct payment”.
The Council concluded that: “[Miss W] has eligible care and support needs under the Care Act 2014 although declined formal support at this time.”
Miss Y disagreed with the Council’s outcome and disputed that services had actually been declined, which led to allocation of a social worker, reassessment, a request for a direct payment for a PA (a family member) for community based activities, and repeated clarification requests through most of 2024.
In June 2024 the Council created a care plan which outlined Miss W’s eligible needs and how these should be met. Its position was that its reablement services could support her with meal preparation and to build her independence.
As Miss Y was still unhappy she contacted the Council again to reiterate her request for support and the Council agreed to complete another assessment in December 2024.
However, immediately after this assessment Miss W received a diagnosis of ASD. The Council had provisionally recommended 21 weekly hours of support. Miss Y thought it needed to be 40 hours. The Panel (called a quality assurance meeting here) deferred final funding, pending further specialist consideration (sensory and outreach assessment).
Meanwhile, housing adaptations remained undecided.
The Council requested an OT assessment in March 2025. The OT completed a home visit and agreed to draft an assessment and submit a referral for DFG funding.
The woman’s mental health and isolation reportedly worsened during this overall period.
What was found
The Ombudsman found procedural fault in the Council’s handling of care planning.
Whilst it was not wrong to offer intensive reablement as part of meeting needs related to managing nutrition and maintaining a habitable home environment, the care plan needed to address how the service would achieve that goal, and how any wider eligible needs which fell outside the remit of reablement, would be met; namely accessing and engaging in work, training, education or volunteering and making use of necessary facilities or services in the local community.
Here, the care plan failed to specify how each eligible need would be met, breaching statutory requirements under the Care Act 2014, particularly section 25.
This left some needs unaddressed—especially social and community participation—causing distress and avoidable risk to well-being. The Council’s approach fell short of legal duties clearly to set out and review support mechanisms in a compliant care plan.
The Ombudsman ordered the Council to apologise in writing to both Miss Y and Miss W as well as to review Miss W’s care plan to ensure it is compliant with Section 25 of the 2014 Care Act. The Council must also review its processes to ensure legally robust, person-centred support planning in the future. No specific financial compensation was awarded for the distress at this stage.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
After identifying eligible needs, councils are required under sections 24 and 25 of the 2014 Care Act to draw up a care and support plan that is detailed, which addresses each identified eligible need, identifies a budget and sets out how these needs will be met by this budget. The plan must always specify the personal budget, whether needs may be met via direct payments, or by direct commissioning or a mixture of informal support obtained from family or friends.
Regulations also require that any intermediate care or reablement services are provided for up to six weeks free of charge. Public law and the Guidance make it clear that further reviews are carried out following such interventions, assessing whether the aim was achieved or whether longer-term care is required. The Care and Support Statutory Guidance says that councils can use reablement services as a way to discharge their duty to meet needs under Section 18 of the Care Act in para 2.61:
“Although such types of support will usually be provided as a preventative measure under section 2 of the Act, they may also be provided as part of a package of care and support to meet eligible needs.”
The report asserts that “Reablement support can also be used to help inform the outcome of an assessment for longer-term care and support needs.” We can’t find any evidence of that in the Guidance or the Care Act. The ‘outcome’ of an assessment is an eligibility decision – which had already been made here, in early 2024. We think that the LGSCO is getting mixed up here as between assessment and care planning, albeit this is very easy to do, given the pressure to complete a process as efficiently and speedily as possible.
Councils must be able to evidence how their assessment, planning and review processes are thorough, person-centred, and compliant with the statutory framework. Failure to link every eligible need to a corresponding provision in the plan, or to review after short-term services, represents a breach of statutory duty.
Community care law emphasises that the plan must demonstrate a clear mapping from the assessment of needs (covering all the wellbeing outcomes in section 1 and the eligibility criteria in regulation 2), through to explicit detail of how every eligible need will actually be met. Any failure to ensure that a statutorily eligible domain is covered off (for example, community participation or work-related needs) is not just a minor procedural issue but an unlawful failure under the Act, as confirmed in judicial review caselaw. The emphasis on the desirability of co-production also means the plan must evidence genuine involvement and not just passive consultation or communication.
Community care law further points out that the statutory duty to provide care and support under section 18 arises immediately upon identifying the presence of eligible needs and cannot easily lawfully be deferred pending specialist input or internal funding approvals. Any gap between assessment, planning, and actual service delivery amounts to a breach of duty if it leads to continuing unmet need. The Ombudsman does not stress this point or the risks of legal challenge where councils delay or withhold provision following an assessment finding of eligibility.
We are not clear from the report whether the requested family member was living in the same household or not, or whether it was a close relative. We would point out that the published analysis does not clarify that uncertainty about diagnosis, preference for a family PA, or disputes about adaptation should not block or delay immediate support for eligible needs.
For decision-makers, professionals and advocates, it is vital to recognise that a compliant plan is not just a procedural tool but a binding legal guarantee. Councils must ensure every eligible need and statutory outcome is linked to specified, funded provision, and update or review the plan responsively as circumstances change. Any failure opens the way for direct legal challenge as well as complaint. Robust internal review, defensible recording, and timely provision—irrespective of professional disagreement—are all legal necessities, not optional best practice.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Wiltshire Council (24 010 588) report.
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