The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s assessment of an adult social care referral for her father. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council to warrant an investigation and further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
The complaint
Mrs X complains about how the Council assessed a referral into adult social care for her father.
Mrs X feels that the lack of adult social care intervention led to her father dying prematurely because of neglect.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide: there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mrs X says she would like an explanation from the Council about what happened when a referral into adult social care was made for her father.
The Council provided Mrs X with an explanation about its assessment of the referral, actions taken, and the communication maintained with Mrs X and her family at the time. The Council has apologised to Mrs X.
The Council say that Mrs X’s father also had capacity to be involved in the decision-making process about his care and it appears he was involved in this.
We cannot make a link between the adult social care support and Mrs X’s father’s death. The Council said the coroner did not deem neglect to be a cause of death. We would not reach conclusions that are different to a coroner. Therefore there is nothing further we could add to the Council’s investigation.
We cannot find fault with how the Council have responded to the original adult social care referral. Mrs X requesting an apology in isolation to the complaint handling is not reason enough for us to investigate this complaint.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because: we cannot find fault with how the Council have acted; and we will not request the Council make another apology and therefore further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman