Somerset NHS Foundation Trust

4. Mrs E complains that doctors did not admit her father to hospital under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act (MHA is the law that allows people to be detained for treatment without consent, for the safety of themselves and others). She feels her father should have been admitted under Section 3 between June 2018 and June 2022.

5. Mrs E complains the Trust put pressure on the family to find a private care home when it discharged her father on 2 July 2018.

6. On 25 June 2018, the Trust applied for a seven-day urgent Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS allows restrictions of freedom on people without mental capacity when in a care home or hospital). This expired on 25 June 2018. Mrs E complains the Trust treated her father for another seven days without authority.

7. Mr E paid private care home costs of around £200,000. Mrs E feels this would not be the case if professionals had correctly checked her father’s condition and he had been sectioned.

8. Mrs E feels the Trust put them under pressure to find private care because of costs and she was uncomfortable to challenge this when she should have been focussing on her father’s wellbeing.

9. Mrs E feels that her father being treated after the DoLS ended was a breach of his human rights and shows the Trust acted inappropriately.

10. Mrs E wants £200,000 compensation for the combined complaints she has made.

11. Mr E has vascular dementia. The Trust detained him for 28 days under Section 2 of the MHA between 21 May and 17 June 2018.

12. In July 2018, the Trust said that Mr E did not meet the criteria to be admitted under Section 3 of the MHA. Since then, Mr E has paid for his private care home fees.

13. Mrs E says her father has consistently shown aggressive and inappropriate behaviour beyond normal dementia symptoms. She feels he met the criteria to be admitted under Section 2 of the MHA.

15. The law says a person needs to make their complaint to us within a year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to us after one year, unless we consider there is a good reason to.

16. We looked at the reasons why Mrs E did not complain to us sooner. We also considered the time the Trust took to respond to her complaint.

17. Doctors discharged Mr E from a psychiatric ward at the Trust in July 2018.

18. Mrs E told us she became aware she had reason to complain in December 2021. This is when she got information from the Trust after she made a Subject Access Request (SAR) to get copies of her father’s records.

19. The Trust thanked Mrs E for raising her concerns on 26 September 2021 and sent its response on 21 December. This suggests Mrs E made her SAR before December.

20. Mrs E sent an email to different politicians on 6 October 2020 saying her father was sectioned then released after treatment, and they had to pay for private care themselves. She said her father’s behaviour was getting worse and he was a danger to himself and others.

21. This email shows Mrs E was unhappy the Trust did not section her father before December 2021. The email also says she was contacting the Trust in July and August of that year.

22. We consider when a person became aware they had reason to complain, not when the problem became serious enough to decide to complain.

23. We recognise the information Mrs E got in the SAR may have added to her concerns, as well as her father’s health getting worse and care costs rising. But, the evidence shows Mrs E had reason to complain about this issue before December 2021.

24. Mrs E also told us after her father was discharged to the care home, she felt it was not the right place for his needs, saying she had concerns about it ‘from day 1’. Mrs E also says, ‘He was not fit for discharge.’ This shows she had concerns from the time of discharge. We have used July 2020 as when Mrs E knew there was a problem as this is when we can clearly see written evidence of the concerns.

25. Mrs E raised the complaint with the Trust in September 2021. The Trust responded on 21 December. Mrs E continued to correspond with the Trust and she had a virtual meeting with it on 3 February.

26. The Trust sent a letter on 14 February with the outcome of the meeting.

27. For the complaint to be in time, Mrs E should have brought it to us by July 2021. Mrs E brought the complaint to us on 25 April 2022, nine months out of time. Mrs E did not tell us about any barriers that stopped her from coming to us sooner.

Pressure on the family to find a private care home

28. Mrs E tells us she knew she had reason to complain about this issue after getting information from the SAR in September 2021.

29. Mrs E would have had this concern immediately, or soon after Mr E was discharged and she needed to find him a care home on 2 July 2018. It does not seem that Mrs E raised this concern with the Trust until September 2021.

30. As noted above, Mrs E told politicians about the private care costs they had paid. This tells us she felt the pressure to pay much earlier than September 2021 when she complained to the Trust about it.

31. We recognise this concern is likely to have returned when she got the information in September 2021 from the SAR. We do not think this issue was only a concern from when she got the SAR information.

32. Because Mrs E first knew about this problem in July 2018 and did not bring the complaint to us until April 2022, it is almost three years outside of our time limit.

33. Mrs E has not given us any reason why she could not bring the complaint to us earlier, so we do not feel we have been given a good reason to put the time limit to one side.

Treated at a psychiatric ward without authority

34. From the SAR information she received, Mrs E knew her father was treated at a psychiatric ward for seven days after the DoLS ended. We realise Mrs E may not have known about this before getting the SAR information and it may have been a shock.

35. It seems there was no legal authority in place for this period of treatment. We note the Trust apologised for the error.

36. It is unclear how this issue affected Mrs E or her father. Mrs E does not seem to be complaining that the treatment itself during the seven days was inappropriate. Mrs E told us she felt her father needed to be sectioned and this is a higher level order than a DoLS order.

37. Mr E was treated at Mrs E’s preferred hospital and he got the care she wanted him to have. We recognise the Trust made an administrative error but we do not consider this to have affected Mr E or Mrs E negatively. There is no suggestion the care was inappropriate.

38. We understand the overall situation is frustrating. We wish Mrs E, her father, and the family well for the future.

1. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has carefully considered Mrs E’s complaint about Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust).

2. Mrs E raised three complaint issues. We have decided we cannot look at the concerns about her father, Mr E, not being sectioned and the pressure to find a care home because these complaints were brought to us outside of our time limit.

3. We have decided we will not investigate the complaint about Mrs E’s father being treated without the Trust having authority. While we realise this was a surprise to Mrs E and the situation caused her, her father and family upset and distress, we have not seen evidence of the issue having a substantial effect. We will explain the reasons for our decision in more detail below.