A care home in the Warrington area

4. Mrs X complains staff at the care home lost her fathers, Mr X’s, dentures. As a result of this, she says the experience caused her distress, anger, and upset. As an outcome of her complaint, she would like service improvements.

5. The care home transferred Mr X to a hospice. The staff packed Mr X’s items. However, there is a disagreement between Mrs X and the care home about whether staff packed the dentures.

6. While the care home has not acknowledged it lost the dentures, it has offered Mrs X a goodwill payment of £500.

9. Mrs X complains the care home lost Mr X’s dentures. As a result, she says this caused her distress, anger, and upset. She told us she was traumatised by the thought of Mr X going to heaven with no teeth.

10. The care home disagrees it lost Mr X’s dentures, and it said a carer confirmed they packed all of Mr X’s items, which were transferred to the foyer for collection. However, it acknowledges it never completed an inventory of Mr X’s belongings. It said staff did not complete this due to time constraints.

11. The Ombudsman’s ‘Principles of Good Administration’ outline that public bodies should create and maintain reliable and usable records as evidence of their activities. They should manage records in line with recognised standards to ensure they can be retrieved and are kept for as long as there is a statutory duty or business need. Applied here, this guidance means the staff member packing Mr X’s belongings should have made an inventory record they could refer to. Not doing this is an indication of a failing and means we cannot be reassured the care home followed due process to keep track of Mr X’s dentures. Mrs X has outlined the distress this caused.

12. We therefore looked at what the care home has done to try and address this. It set out that in future its staff will complete these records to ensure a full list of personal belongings are recorded for patients. Whilst we cannot say this will prevent belongings being lost, we consider this will help staff keep track of where things are. It also offered £500 financial compensation. Overall, this is an appropriate remedy for the distress caused. It is also in line with the outcomes she is seeking.

13. The care home’s offer is in line with the Ombudsman’s ‘Principles of remedy’. The care home has sought to put things right in the form of a financial remedy and service improvements, which is in line with these principles. These are also the outcomes Mrs X was seeking, and therefore we do not think the care home needs to do anything more.

14. In summary, we have decided we will not take further action on Mrs X’s complaint. We appreciate that the experience caused her distress, anger, and upset. We hope we have explained the thorough consideration we have given to our decision and clearly outlined the reasons for it.

1. We are sorry to hear about the experience Mrs X had. We appreciate the time she took to explain this, and we do not underestimate her distress.

2. Having looked at Mrs X’s case, we have decided not to consider her complaint further. While we saw indicated failings in respect to a care home in the Warrington area (the care home) losing her father’s dentures, we found it has already taken sufficient action to put things right.

3. We appreciate why this complaint is important to Mrs X and will explain our decision in more detail below. We hope our explanation provides her with reassurance about how carefully we have considered her complaint before reaching our decision.