Clinical Issues
10. Before we decide if we should investigate a complaint, we look at whether there is an organisation that is better placed to deal with the concerns. Some complaints can be looked at by us and by other organisations. We would usually consider that only one investigation should take place.
11. In April 2025 we were contacted by the Joint Working Team which is a team that looks at both health, and local government and social care complaints. It covers the remit of both PHSO and the LGSCO. The Joint Working Team advised it was considering Miss R’s complaint regarding the Trust.
12. We can see the Joint Working Team provided its decision to Miss R in August 2025 (reference number 24 022 531/25 009 073). It determined it had not received Miss R’s complaint within the 12-month time limit, and it had seen no good reason to put the time limit to the side.
13. We have reviewed the decision by Joint Working to determine whether the issues raised to us by Miss R have already been considered. We can see Joint Working considered the safeguarding report and the clinical issues that were raised between the time period from 2021 to 2022, as detailed in paragraph five.
14. We have decided not to investigate the matters Miss R has brought to us because the issues complained about have already been considered. For this reason, we are declining to investigate Miss R’s complaint as it has already been considered, and a decision has been provided. We recognise this decision will be disappointing for Miss R.
15. Miss R has told us of the difficulties she has had with the Trust regarding the care her father received. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Miss R for bringing her complaint to us and hope we have explained the consideration we have given to our decision and clearly outlined the reasons for it.
Complaint Handling
16. As the Ombudsman is a limited resource, we cannot investigate every complaint we receive. We need to use our resources to investigate the most serious cases, alongside cases that will have the biggest impact on improving public services for everyone.
17. Miss R said the Trust’s complaint handling was too slow and the responses did not provide sufficient answers to her concerns. She told us this caused her stress at an already difficult time and enhanced her grief. We acknowledge the time taken by the Trust to respond caused Miss R to feel stress and impacted her ability to grieve.
18. We have considered the emotional impact claimed by Miss R in line with our severity of injustice scale. Levels 1 and 2 deal with distress, worry, frustration and similar emotional impacts. We understand Miss R’s concerns and the distress this caused to her.
19. Level 2 on our scale says it is for instances of poor complaint handling with delays of up to one year or longer. It says we would expect the person to recover once the poor service has ceased. It says we would also reasonably expect any impact to diminish completely in the fullness of time. We do not think we could link the emotional impact on Miss R to a period longer than six months once the Trust had completed local resolution. This complaint would therefore fall on the lower levels of our scale.
20. We have decided to focus on the more serious complaints that people bring to us, where they may have faced a big impact. For example, these cases may be about a potentially avoidable death or where a person has suffered prolonged pain. These types of complaints are where we can often make the biggest difference. This will allow us to provide the right level of service to those people as quickly as possible.
21. We acknowledge how distressing these events were and that this is not the decision Miss R was hoping for. In line with our service model guidance, we do not think it would be proportionate to consider this part of the complaint further. We will therefore not take any further action on this point.