The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: Ms X complains the Council failed to deal properly with safeguarding concerns about her adult son. The Council was not at fault over its handling of the safeguarding concerns.
The complaint
The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Ms X, complains the Council failed to deal properly with safeguarding concerns about her adult son.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended) If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I have: considered the complaint and the documents provided by Ms X; discussed the complaint with Ms X; considered the documents provided by the Council and the care provider; and invited comments on a draft of this statement from Ms X, the Council and the care provider, for me to consider before making my final decision.
What I found
What happened Ms X’s son, Mr Y has a significant learning disability. He lives in his own home with 24-hour support. For several years Ms X used direct payments from the Council to pay Getta Life to provide care workers to meet Mr Y’s needs.
In 2019 one of Mr Y’s care workers was accused of using their own medication to sedate him. This was reported to the Council as a safeguarding concern, which passed the issue on to the Police to investigate it.
In April 2023 Ms X made a covert audio recording of two care workers who were looking after her son. Care worker B was relatively experienced, but care worker C was still being inducted into the role.
In May the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue the case against the care worker against whom allegations had been made in 2019.
At the end of May Ms X reported safeguarding concerns to the Council about the two care workers she had recorded in April. She said the recording showed they had been medicating her son. As part of her report she transcribed parts of the recording. She identified several references to drugs, including “Dok”, “Clozin”, “Tramadol”, “medication” and “spiked”. She suggested the care workers may have been giving her son small amounts of different drugs. She suggested they had been controlling Mr Y’s milk drinking, so they could get him to drink milk which they had spiked with drugs, to make him more placid.
The Council used its powers under Section 42 of the Care Act 2014 to cause Getta Life to make enquiries into the safeguarding concerns.
As part of its enquiries, Getta Life interviewed the care workers, who denied giving Mr Y medication. It also interviewed other care workers who worked with Mr Y. It produced its own transcripts of key sections of the recording. The care provider did not identify references to drugs but other words, including “talk”, closing”, “meditation” and “it’s wiped”.
Getta Life gave notice in June and stopped providing care workers for Mr Y in August. Since then Ms X has used the direct payments to employ some of Mr Y’s previous care workers and has provided more support herself. She plans to recruit more care workers and reduce the support she provides.
The Council completed the enquiries into the safeguarding concerns in August. It decided they “were inconclusive and there was no evidence to substantiate them”. It noted Mr Y was no longer at risk, as the care workers against whom the allegations had been made had stopped visiting him and Getta Life no longer supported him.
Is there evidence of fault by the Council which caused injustice?
Councils have wide discretion over how to pursue safeguarding concerns. The Council was entitled to ask the care provider to make enquiries into them. If those enquiries had identified a possible criminal offence, the Council would no doubt have passed the matter onto the Police. But the care provider’s enquiries did not substantiate the allegation of abuse.
I have listened to the recording myself. Parts of it are difficult to follow for various reasons, including the quality of the recording, background noise, and the idiom used by the care workers. Without any visual references it is not always clear what the care workers were talking about. However, overall the interactions between the care workers and with Mr Y did not strike me as suspicious. Nor did I identify the references to drugs Ms X identified.
Within this context, I have not found fault with the Council over its handling of the safeguarding concerns.
Final decision
I have completed my investigation on the basis there has been no fault by the Council.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman