Southend council has agreed to apologise to a mother for twice failing to assess her needs as a carer despite agreeing to do so in a previous investigation by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

In the previous complaint, the mother told the Ombudsman Southend-on-Sea City Council had not carried out a parent carer’s assessment when looking at her son’s needs as a disabled child. It agreed to the Ombudsman’s recommendation to assess her needs as a carer.

However, the Ombudsman’s second investigation has found the council did not carry out a proper assessment. It did not consider her needs as a carer, or take into account that the mother herself had disabilities, and instead again focused on her son’s needs.

The Ombudsman also said that when the mother complained to the council, it failed to consider her concerns under the statutory three stage children’s complaints process, as it should have done.

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Ms Amerdeep Somal said:

“Southend council failed to conduct a proper assessment of the mother’s needs despite agreeing to do so with my office.

“The assessment it did make, did not properly consider the impact on her mental health and wellbeing of being a carer for a disabled child. This raises my concerns that the council is not fully aware of its duty to ensure both the needs of service users and their carers are fully considered when carrying out combined assessments.

“I have asked the council to carry out some training with its officers about  completing such assessments, and to remind them about those complaints which fall under the Children’s Statutory Complaints Process. I hope this will ensure complaints are dealt with appropriately in future.”

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman remedies injustice and shares learning from investigations to help improve public, and adult social care, services. In this case the council has agreed to apologise to the mother for not carrying out a proper carer’s needs assessment. It will also pay her £1,000 to recognise her distress and the time it has taken to complain twice.

It will also arrange for an independent social worker to carry out a standalone assessment for her.

The Ombudsman has the power to make recommendations to improve processes for the wider public. In this case the council will carry out training on how to conduct a parent carer’s needs assessment and issue a briefing note to all relevant staff detailing complaints that fall within the scope of the statutory children’s complaints procedure.

A word from the Ombudsman, Michelle Morris 

Welcome to the 6th edition of our newsletter. 

We have now completed the second year of our Strategic Plan 2023-26 ‘A New Chapter’. Many actions set out under the Plan have now been delivered and we will continue to work towards our ambitious goals during 2025/26. 

We remain focused on rebuilding the reputation of the office, following the social media incident last year which called our impartiality into question. While an independent review of our investigation of Code of Conduct Complaints found that our decision making was appropriate, fair and free from political bias, it also made recommendations to improve the current safeguards for ensuring fairness and impartiality.   

Over the recent months, our focus has also been on the Finance Committee’s post-legislative review of the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019. The Act requires the Senedd to undertake a post-legislative review as soon as practicable after 21 May 2024 (that is, five years since the 2019 Act received Royal Assent). We have been busy assembling evidence on the impact of our proactive powers to accept complaints other than in writing; undertake investigations on own initiative; and set complaints standards. We have also been invited to speak to the Committee on 30 April. 

In the meantime, we again bring you a quick and easy-to-digest summary of our complaints and improvement work. We are not including in this edition of the newsletter our year-end complaints statistics, as the full details will be available in our Annual Report & Accounts for 2024/25. However, we provide summaries of our recent public interest reports and our Code of Conduct referrals, as well as details of our two recent thematic reports and our complaints standards work. 

It has been a busy year! Despite the challenges, we have a lot to be proud of. We are looking forward to sharing more evidence of our impact in our submission to the Senedd’s Finance Committee as well as discussing all areas of our performance in our next Annual Report.  

[...]

Today, Tuesday 1 April 2025, the Scottish Parliament agreed the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body’s (SPBC) recommendation, that Paul McFadden be appointed Scotland’s fourth Public Services Ombudsman. 

Rosemary Agnew, the current Ombudsman’s, eight-year term ends on 30 April 2025. In the interim until Paul takes up office, Andrew Crawford, a member of the SPSO Senior Leadership Team, will be appointed as the Interim Ombudsman from 1 May 2025. 

Rosemary Agnew said; 

“Congratulations to Paul McFadden. I welcome the announcement and the interim arrangements, as this will ensure there is no break or dip in service for our service users - complainants, whistleblowers, applicants to the Scottish Welfare Fund, and public bodies.”