By James Simons-
A social worker from Bradford Council has been criticised by the Ombudsman for subjecting a woman to an “unwarranted personal attack” after failing to properly investigate safeguarding concerns she raised about her mother’s care, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has found.
The Ombudsman exposed serious failings by a social worker from Bradford Council who badly failed a dementia patient, and ignored several complaints by her concerned child, eventually falling out with her dramatically instead of the social worker admitting her unprofessionalism and shocking failings.
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Bradford Council accepted the Ombudsman’s recommendations to pay the woman £1,000 in recognition of the “significant anxiety and distress” it caused her by its handling of the safeguarding concerns, and a further £500 due to failings in the way it subsequently handled her complaints.
The Council has also agreed to put in place a system of checks and balances to “ensure the validity of its finalised safeguarding investigations. Bradford council has been criticised for failing to follow its safeguarding procedure when the woman raised concerns about her mother, who had dementia and was a fully NHS-funded resident in a care home.
The ombudsman who investigated the case found that there was “an almost complete reliance” by the safeguarding social worker who investigated the concerns on the verbal reports of the care home staff, which led to a report that accused her of verbally abusing staff and raised safeguarding concerns about her.
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The safeguarding social worker was also exposed for breaching Data Protection by sharing the complainant’s email with the care home, despite her request for it to remain “private and confidential”.
The social worker was also criticised for failing to complete a capacity assessment under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 .
Negligence
Bradford Council was exposed by the investigation for ignoring concerns raised by the woman about the care and treatment of her mother in the home in an email to a safeguarding social worker. The deeply upset woman also reported that her mother was often left in a wet pad, and that faeces which she smeared around her face and in her mouth had not been properly cleaned away.
Wrong Administration Of Medicine
She also complained that her mother’s medication was not being administered correctly as there were part-tablets left on her lips or in her mouth. The complaints about the woman being left in a wet pad and having medication on her lips were also raised by a speech and language therapist (SLT) in a safeguarding alert to the council the previous month .
The email was marked “Private and Confidential please” because the woman feared her mother might become the target of reprisals if the home became aware of the complaint.
In a show of disregard to the request, the safeguarding social worker said that she would be visiting the care home and looking at file notes, as well as visiting her, but then she passed on the complainant’s email to the care home. The Ombudsman also found that the council failed to meet the woman’s eligible need to maintain her home.
Safeguarding Concerns
Worse was to come revealing an utter level of irresponsibility by the social worker. In April, the woman emailed both the safeguarding social worker and the woman’s own social worker two photographs, one showing medication on and around her mother’s mouth, and the other appearing to show faeces on her mouth.
The care worker told the woman and a visiting dentist that it was a slow-release medication which had been given at 7am.
On the advice of the dentist, the woman checked with a pharmacist who told her the medication had been left far too long if it had been given over two hours previously, and the woman could not have ingested the whole dose.
The woman asked for this incident to be added to the safeguarding concerns raised as one of neglect. She also said she had been forced to clean faeces off her mother’s face herself because this hadn’t been done properly, despite care staff saying she had been cleaned.
Later that month, the safeguarding social worker emailed the woman to say that she had spoken to care staff, and been told she had previously been told to stop giving her mother inappropriate food and extra fluids outside of professional recommendations, saying she should stop doing so.
In her response, she questioned why the safeguarding concerns she had raised weren’t mentioned in the report.
She said she couldn’t understand how the safeguarding social worker had reached her conclusions about her behaviour without discussing the allegations with her beforehand, and asked why no attempt had been made to verify her allegations by discussing them with any other member of her or with the speech and language therapist (SLT)
The safeguarding social worker also made counter-allegations which she never discussed with the complainant or her family before publishing her conclusions, or supported her mother to be represented, in defiance of the council’s safeguarding policy.
The safeguarding social worker had circulated her initial email marked ‘private and confidential’ without her permission to the care home, and asked whether this was a data breach. She said the investigation had made the situation worse as she was now reluctant to raise any matters of concern at the home.
The council acknowledged the complaint on 14 June and said it would aim to respond within 20 working days; but it failed to respond until 10 September, by which time the safeguarding social worker had left its employment.
Insufficient Communication
Bradford Council fully upheld two of the complaints, admitting that there had been insufficient communication with the family in the investigation and that there had been data breach in the safeguarding social worker sending the email to the care home.
The ombudsman said : “There was an almost complete reliance by the safeguarding social worker on the verbal reports of the care home staff, that led to a report which amounted to an unwarranted personal attack on Mrs X, and which Mrs X had no opportunity to discuss before it was finalised,” the watchdog said.
The watchdog exposed the council’s failure to follow the safeguarding process correctly when the complainant’s concerns were not logged on its database. The ombudsman criticised the council for sharing the complainant’s email with the care home, after she particularly requested for it to remain confidential. The council has apologised for this and put additional training in place.
The woman eventually died after a long delay in response to the complaints made by her child. the ombudsman said a fresh investigation of the original complaints was unlikely to be effective given how long had passed.
A spokesperson from Bradford Council said: “We take on board all the points mentioned by the ombudsman and we will ensure that this leads to improvements in the way we work in future. Our standards fell below those we normal expect on this occasion.
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