Council agrees £43k payout after delay in providing services for disabled man

Essex County Council has agreed to pay £43,000 to a disabled young man and his mother after a delay of almost two years in putting place resources for his care.

The move follows a Local Government Ombudsman finding that the local authority had been guilty of maladministration.

The payment is intended to reflect the services the 25-year-old should have had.

The man, called Mr M in the LGO report, lived on his own in a flat at the time the complaint to the Ombudsman was made.

He has a rare genetic disorder as well as – after an assault in 2004 – mild paralysis on the left side of his body, tremors and chronic pain in his spine.

Mr M also has mild learning disabilities and some mental health problems.

“He finds it difficult to motivate himself and to structure his time without a lot of support and encouragement,” the LGO said, adding that he had been exploited financially by others in the past.

In December 2008 a social worker from the county council assessed Mr M as needing 30 hours a week. This would include help with shopping and meals, support to attend medical appointments and to socialise, and reminding to take medication, do housework and laundry and attend to personal hygiene.

But it took seven months for his case to go before a board of officers from Essex’s Adult Social Care department.

The board did not agree to fund the services, and referred the case to a different board.

The LGO investigation found that this second board “never considered it and the council lost sight of the case”.

The social worker asked for the case to be transferred to someone else because she could not get funding agreed.

The mother of Mr M complained 21 months after she first asked for help and 18 months after Mr M had been assessed.

Essex went on to agree funding two months later, in October 2010.

The Ombudsman’s investigator found that the local authority had systems for keeping track of cases that needed funding decisions.

Nothing was found to suggest the delay in the case was due to officers in different teams trying to protect their budgets.

Recording a finding of maladministration, the LGO report said: “The law says councils must not delay in providing funding to meet eligible social care needs.”

The Ombudsman, Anne Seex, said that the council’s delays had caused significant injustice to the young man.

She said: “[Mr M] was socially isolated and struggled to cope with living independently. He had episodes of feeling low, suffered anxiety and was self-harming.”

The LGO also recommended that Essex review its self-assessment questionnaire and resource allocation system to ensure that questions and answers give enough weight to: psychological needs; and needs which are for ‘prompting and encouragement’ to access the community, complete personal care or domestic chores, as opposed to hands-on care.

Philip Hoult