Date of decision: 06 October 2025
Summary
A mother complained about the Council’s failure to provide overnight respite care for her disabled son when a child, prior to 2024, and its refusal to provide financial support for the alternative care facility she set up herself by renting accommodation. She had been previously forced to manage her son’s high care needs with minimal help, causing significant distress and frustration. Repeated requests for appropriate support and reviews were not properly considered by the Council, leaving the family at risk and unsupported.
What happened
The Ombudsman decided not to exercise discretion about what happened between 2016 and September 2022 as Mrs X could have complained sooner. The Ombudsman investigated what happened from September 2022 to February 2025, however, which was 12 months before Mrs X first complained to the Council in September 2023.
In 2016, when P was a boy, he had experienced effective and beneficial respite at a service called Centre B, which stopped after an incident of some sort. He got no further respite after that date, and his mother suffered.
In September 2022 P started attending college three days per week, and this provided day time respite. However, this ended in November 2023. Tuition was provided at home instead. Mrs X said that the failure to provide educational provision 5 days a week put an enormous strain on her mental health and well-being. She said she needed additional support in the form of overnight respite care. She was told that there was a long waiting list for Centre B and similar options would not be available because of P’s challenging behaviour.
In September 2022, the Council had carried out a child and family assessment which stated ‘The family is managing well at the moment. P has a good team of carers around him’. Mrs X had said things could be improved by’ having overnight support at Centre B. The assessment stated a review would be carried out in six months. There was no record of this review ever taking place.
In March 2023, the mother informed the Council she intended to rent a property for respite care because of the Council’s failure to organise. The Council discussed this with her but raised concerns primarily around the use of P’s benefits to fund the arrangement, and P’s capacity to sign a tenancy agreement. The process stalled, with no further investigation or decisions by the Council.
When P turned 18 in March 2024, the adult social care team assessed him as needing residential respite, so Mrs P received direct payments to fund two nights of overnight respite per month. She indicated satisfaction with this arrangement.
From September 2023 Mrs P made multiple complaints highlighting the two-year wait for children’s respite care, the lack of clear responses, and confusion over complaint handling. The Council issued conflicting responses, one of which was that there was a two year wait for residential care and because of P’s age this would not be possible while he was still a child. The Council said that the request would simply be passed on to the adult social care team.
The Council delayed a final decision, and only belatedly recognised errors – apologising for not following statutory complaints procedures.
What was found
The records contradicted what the Council said about there not having been a documented request for residential care. The 2022 Assessment showed that this was identified by Mrs X as an area that could be improved upon. The Ombudsman accepted that this was not agreed by the Council as a need at that time, but there were no records of the matter being considered by the Council in response to what Mrs X said.
Because it was a child in need assessment it should have been reviewed after six months but no review took place by the children’s services department.
The matter was not addressed until 18 months later when the adult team took over. This was fault. The Ombudsman could not say on the balance of probabilities whether a review would have led to a different outcome, but the result was uncertainty which was injustice requiring a remedy.
The Council was not obliged to fund the home-based respite care facility which Mrs X said she was forced to set up, through benefits (given that he was still a child and living with this mother, we think). But its failure to consider this properly was fault. This caused ongoing frustration and uncertainty. This injustice required a remedy.
The Council should have followed the three-stage procedure for looking at complaints about children’s social care services instead of its corporate complaints procedure. The Council accepted that this was fault. [There is no explanation of why the corporate system was relied on, but it may have been because of the benefits claim for the property.]
It was important that Mrs X’s complaints were considered under the three-stage procedure as this would have provided a proper structure with an independent element and would have ensured that different elements of the complaint were kept separate thus avoiding confusion and delay.
The Ombudsman required the Council to apologise, pay £1,000 for its failures regarding respite care consideration, and £500 for complaint handling distress, rather than the £150 offered, and to take steps to improve both complaint handling and Children in Need assessment reviews.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
In light of relevant community care case law and Children Act and Chronically Sick and Disabled Person’s Act law, the Ombudsman’s response to the Council’s failures broadly aligns with statutory obligations, in so far as it can, given the Ombudsman cannot make a finding that the child should have received respite.
The Children Act 1989 (Schedule 2 paragraph 96)(1)(c)) and Breaks for Carers of Disabled Children Regulations 2011 requires councils to provide a range of services designed to assist family carers of disabled children to continue to provide care, or to do so more effectively, by giving them breaks from caring. These services must include a range of daytime care, overnight care and leisure activities. This range of services must be set out in a ‘short breaks statement’ and include details of any eligibility criteria.
We do not think that the investigator explored the nature of this duty to a sufficient extent, because the absence of resources commissioned for this duty does not constitute a defence and there is no suggestion that the situation did not compel provision for the woman.
The legal requirement for a transparent, evidence-based rationale in care and support planning, including the setting of personal budgets for respite or replacement care, has been reinforced by case law such as CP v NE Lincs, in adults’ services. Failure to provide such transparency, including a clear breakdown of how needs and budgets are determined, may itself constitute an unlawful breach and expose councils to successful legal challenge, and restitution, if people could only find the energy to challenge, in the context of children’s services.
Additionally, where urgent needs arise—particularly when a carer signals inability to continue, or rapid deterioration in wellbeing—statutory guidance and legal precedent stress that local authorities must provide an immediate, provisional response before further assessment or eligibility determination. This “sole justifiable response” requirement is rooted in judicial review regarding urgent cases (Ali Raja and others), yet was not referenced in the Ombudsman’s reasoning, no doubt because the issue was respite for a child, not an adult.
Although the Ombudsman’s report does not mention this, it seems that there was no transition assessment in line with the Statutory Guidance. This should have been done before P reached 18 and might have highlighted the need for overnight respite, sooner.
We are struck by the statement in the 2022 assessment that the family were ‘managing well’ which is at obvious variance with the statement by Mrs X that overnight support would improve things. A little more professional curiosity could have uncovered how much carer strain she was experiencing at that time and was still experiencing in March 2023 when she reached the point of considering renting a property for organising respite care.
We welcome the highlighting of the advantages of the three stage procedure for complaints about children’s social care services. In our experience this is a better procedure because of the involvement of an independent person. This might have led to a speedier acceptable outcome for Mrs X and P. At stage 2 of the Children’s procedure for complaints, councils must appoint an investigating officer to look into the complaint and an independent person who is responsible for overseeing the investigation and ensuring its independence.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s Milton Keynes Council (23 020 425) 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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