Date of decision: 08 December 2025
Summary
A father caring for his disabled adult daughter complained that the Council delayed assessing his needs as a carer and failed to tell him the outcome of a safeguarding enquiry after he reported an incident with her care worker.
The delay meant he went without a direct payment for respite he was later found to need, and he was left distressed and uncertain about whether his daughter was safe.
What happened
In June 2023, the daughter applied to the Council for a blue badge and the Council supported this by sharing a copy of her care and support plan to evidence her mobility and care needs. In April 2024, the Council received a referral to complete a carer’s assessment for her father, who was providing unpaid care for her, and it agreed that it would carry out that assessment in May 2024.
In June 2024, there was an incident at the daughter’s home involving one of her paid carers: the father reported that the carer had removed clothing at her front door. The Council treated this as a safeguarding alert and opened a safeguarding enquiry, gathering information from the father, from the care provider agency, and by reviewing the provider’s own internal investigation into the incident. After considering this information, the Council decided to close the safeguarding referral on the basis that it considered there was no risk to the daughter and that the outcome of the safeguarding investigation was inconclusive. The Council did not tell the father the outcome of his safeguarding referral.
In early November 2024, the father made a formal complaint to the Council, raising three issues: the June 2024 incident with his daughter’s carer, the fact that he still had not received a carer’s assessment, and his concern that the Council had not supported his daughter’s blue badge application.
Later in November 2024, the Council finally completed a carer’s assessment for him, which concluded that he was entitled to a direct payment of £350 for respite to support him in his caring role. In December 2024, the Council responded to the complaint, explaining that it had in fact supported the blue badge application by sharing the daughter’s plan, that it had carried out and closed the safeguarding enquiry on the basis of no identified ongoing risk and inconclusive evidence, and acknowledging that it had failed to tell the father the outcome and that there had been significant delay in completing his carer’s assessment.
What was found
The Ombudsman found fault for the delayed carer’s assessment and for not feeding back the safeguarding outcome, and required an apology, a distress payment and service improvements. No fault was found in the way the Council supported the daughter’s blue badge application, as it had provided her plan, which would have detailed the support she received and provided evidence of her care needs. The Ombudsman was satisfied with the way the Council had looked into the safeguarding concern and had made the decision to close the referral.
The Ombudsman found clear fault in the delay between the April 2024 referral for a carer’s assessment and its completion in November 2024. The Council recognised it had delayed carrying out the assessment. If the Council had carried out the carer’s assessment sooner, the father could have started to access the respite earlier. He explained that having no respite put a strain on his own mental health, for which he was receiving treatment.
As a remedy, the Council agreed within one month to apologise to the father for the distress caused by the delayed carer’s assessment and the failure to communicate the safeguarding outcome, to pay him £150 to acknowledge that distress, and to review why his carer’s assessment took so long and what steps it would take to improve communication and processes to avoid similar delays, reporting its planned improvements back to the Ombudsman.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
The Ombudsman’s treatment of the duty to carry out a carer’s assessment focuses on delay and the consequences, but it does not fully reflect the community care law principle that the duty to assess is both mandatory and time‑critical once it appears that a carer may have needs for support, and that the authority must actively explore the impact of caring on wellbeing and the sustainability of the caring role, rather than treating the assessment as an administrative step that can be deferred until the system has capacity. An urgent assessment may be indicated where there is evidence of deteriorating mental health and clear strain on a long‑term caring arrangement.
This sort of assessment is not simply a gateway to a modest one‑off payment – this has been outlawed by the Ombudsman in a report involving Wirral which was not decided until after this report decision date.
In this complaint, the Ombudsman accepts that the seven‑month delay was fault and that the absence of respite exacerbated the father’s mental health difficulties, but it does not analyse whether the Council’s approach amounted to a failure to apply the statutory test for carers’ eligibility and sustainability of care correctly, or whether the authority was required to consider a broader package of support for ongoing respite once it knew that the caring role was already affecting the carer’s mental health.
If the adult has substantial difficulty in being involved and no-one to support them, the appointment of an independent advocate should have been considered, for her own assessment and safeguarding purposes. Here, the daughter had her father to support her, and he should have been involved, in any event, as her carer.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s North Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council (25 011 638) 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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