A woman will be paid for more than £9,000 by Buckinghamshire Council after it bungled her late mother’s care.
The resident – known only as Mrs A – is set to receive £500 from the local authority for the ‘distress and anxiety’ it caused her.
She is also to be paid £8969.43 by the council to help clear the invoices for the care of her deceased mother, Mrs X, who required round-the-clock support.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman told the council to make the payments in a new judgement after an investigation by the watchdog found ‘fault’ in the way the council calculated Mrs X’s personal budget, which ‘caused injustice’.
Personal budgets are the amount of money councils pay towards any social care and support people need.
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They can be managed by the council, paid to a care provider or paid to an individual or a member of their family.
Last summer, Buckinghamshire Council worked out Mrs X’s personal budget by comparing her care at home with the cost of a residential care placement, even though the latter ‘would not have met her needs’.
This is despite the council’s own social worker recommending in March 2023 that Mrs X remained at home with a live-in carer.
Their assessment read: “Considering that [Mrs X] does not like people coming into her house, it is likely that if she was moved to a care home, having different carers and been in a new environment may negatively impact on her mental health.”
The ombudsman said Mrs A ‘did not understand why the council did not obtain comparable costs for a live-in carer rather than the residential placement which was not suitable for Mrs X’.
On top of this, a council officer tried to call Mrs A about the personal budget while she was in hospital on June 13, despite the fact that she had told the authority she was having an operation.
She also said a care provider the council had contacted about pricing contacted her at home, against her wishes, to make arrangements to assess her mother for residential care.
The Council accepted ‘this should not have happened and apologised’, according to the ombudsman.
The ombudsman added: “She says it took 16 weeks, which she says was an unacceptably long time, for the council to make the first direct payment and the care agency which had continued to look after Mrs X was chasing her for money.
“The council accepts this was a delay but says it did not impact on the care and support provided to Mrs X.”
The watchdog said the council had claimed that there was a ‘delay in allocating the case to a new social worker after the previous social worker left’.
By calculating Mrs X’s personal budget on the comparative cost of a care home placement, the council did not act in accordance with the guidance, the ombudsman said.
It added: “It also led to a distressing situation where the care home which the council had contacted then approached Mrs A about an assessment visit which was neither wanted nor needed. That was fault on the part of the council.”
Angela Macpherson, the council's cabinet member for health and wellbeing said: “Buckinghamshire Council accepts the findings of this Ombudsman investigation and the mistakes that were made.
“We apologise once again to the family for any distress and upset that our actions may have caused. We will take on board the findings and seek to ensure that the learnings from this case are taken forward for the future.”
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