Ombudsman criticises council after 29 families denied respite support

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has discovered that nearly a third of families of children with special needs in South Gloucestershire have not been receiving the respite care they need.

South Gloucestershire Council admitted to the Ombudsman during an earlier investigation that it had struggled to find respite care for children in its area.

The Ombudsman opened a fresh inquiry with the council subsequently admitting a further 29 families who were entitled to respite care were either not receiving some of their entitlement - or none at all.

The families affected have agreed support packages ranging from a few hours a week with more in school holidays to several hours two-to-one support a week. Some include weekly or several overnight stays each month at a respite centre, and there was also one child who had been assessed as needing a 52-week residential placement, but was instead living at home with limited support.

The failure to provide the agreed support packages in full has the potential to cause significant difficulties and distress to the children and young people and their families who are likely to struggle to cope without it, the Ombudsman said.

Paul Najsarek, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said families in South Gloucestershire had been “struggling without the vital respite support they need for too long”, and the indications the Ombudsman had from the council suggested for many there was no sign of this improving in the near future.

“While we recognise the difficulties the council is having finding appropriate support locally, it should not have taken a complaint to us to spur them into more effective action. Statutory guidance is clear – if a council is satisfied it is necessary to provide support services, then it must provide them, and have the provision in place to do so,” he said.

Najsarek added that he was pleased that South Gloucestershire was working towards improving its breadth of provision and reiterated his hope that the rigorous local oversight it had now agreed to implement would ensure this work was not allowed to drift.

South Gloucestershire apologised for the shortcomings in the service it had been able to provide to the relevant young people and their families. It also fully accepted the findings and recommendations of the Ombudsman.

The council said: “Since the Ombudsman carried out its investigation, we have been able to provide support to more families, to either fully or partially deliver the respite care and positive experiences needed for their children.

“We are not yet able to fully deliver for all of our families, however, and we have an action plan in place that will be discussed at Cabinet level next month, to help to address the outstanding issues and enable us to meet our commitments.”

The council also claimed to have introduced much better systems and processes since the original complaint was made.

“Like councils across the country, we are facing a major challenge in accessing the support packages to suit each family’s individual needs. This often far less a matter of cost and more that the services simply do not currently exist on the scale required,” it said.

South Gloucestershire added that it was committed to doing everything that it could to deliver for all of its families and young people who needed this support. It said it would continue to discuss with them individually not only their needs, but also their experiences of the help which is provided so that the council can continue to make improvements.

Harry Rodd