A family has been paid £2,200 between them by Slough Borough Council after failing to assess a man’s care – leaving him at risk of spending nights in soiled clothes.
The council failed to communicate to the family how it assessed the care needs of a disabled man, a government watchdog found. The watchdog also said the council failed to give the family a way to challenge those assessments.
The local government and social ombudsman said it ‘found fault in the actions of the council which has caused injustice’ to the family.
The complaint was made by a woman on behalf of her brother and father – named in the ombudsman’s report as Mr A and Mr B.
The woman – Ms C – complained that Mr A didn’t receive the care he needed and that his father Mr B, who was his main carer, didn’t get enough support.
She said the family ‘have had the frustration and distress that Mr A has not received the care he needs, and Mr B’s health has worsened because of the extra caring responsibilities’.
Slough Borough Council began paying for Mr A’s care from November 2019. It provided him with a personal budget for carers from an agency, and paid his father Mr B a carer’s allowance.
But the ombudsman says the council failed to properly assess Mr A’s needs at night or Mr B’s ability to meet them, or explain why it thought its assessment was adequate.
It says that in an assessment in 2023 there was ‘a suggestion that Mr A could stay in soiled pads until morning carers attend’. And there was ‘no risk assessment about how this may affect Mr A both physically and mentally’.
It also says Slough Borough Council failed to consider how it could meet Mr A’s needs for social activites, even when coronavirus lockdown restrictions were in place in 2020.
And it says the local authority failed to review how much support Mr B needed despite the fact that his wife was living with dementia and eventually died in February 2022.
The council offered to adapt Mr B’s home to meet Mr A’s needs, and discussed finding alternative accommodation when Mr B declined. But the ombudsman says that it ‘does not appear the council offered Mr A alternative accommodation’.
The council says it didn’t receive completed housing forms from Mr A despite attempts to get one. But the ombudsman says it hasn’t seen sufficient evidence of these attempts and so found the council ‘at fault for the delay in pursuing alternative accommodation’.
But the ombudsman did not uphold complaints by Ms C that council staff behaved badly or rudely.
The ombudsman ruled that the council should pay symbolic payments of £1,000 to Mr A, £1,000 to Mr B and £200 to Ms C, as well as apologise. It also asked Slough Borough Council to remind and train its staff on completing and reviewing assessments.
