Council "at fault" over how it handled disabled girl's death in its care
The local authority had carried out NO meaningful enquiries about the night she died
Last updated 24th Aug 2021
The failure of Swindon Borough Council to properly investigate the death of a child while she was in its care has earned the authority a reprimand from the Local Government Ombudsman.
In the year to March 2021, the local government watchdog investigated nine complaints against the borough council brought by citizens unhappy about how they had been treated.
The ombudsman upheld six of the nine complaints, which is a slightly higher rate that similar councils for the period.
'The council has agreed to make a symbolic payment to her'
The most serious complaint concerned how the council handled the death of a child in its care in November 2017.
The ombudsman’s decision said the severely disabled girl’s mother “complained about the Council’s failure to provide information about her deceased daughter’s care while she was a Looked after Child".
This caused significant distress to Mrs X. The ombudsman finds the council to be at fault because it was unable to show it made any meaningful enquiries about what happened the night Mrs X’s daughter died.
“To remedy the injustice caused, the council has agreed to apologise, make a symbolic payment to her, make enquiries about what happened and reflect on its practices.”
The ombudsman has explained that the child lived with her mother normally but is counted as a looked after child because she was in regular receipt of respite care. The girl died during one of these periods of being in the council’s care.
The inquest found the girl died of natural causes, and a case review found there were no safeguarding concerns arising from her death.
'We take all complaints and feedback extremely seriously'
Councillor David Renard, leader of the borough council, said: “We accept the findings of the Ombudsman and have improved our processes and provided additional training to staff to ensure families are fully supported in similar circumstances.
“The ombudsman is satisfied we have implemented all of the recommendations for each of the six upheld cases that were investigated. We always strive to provide the very best services we can for our local residents and take all complaints and feedback extremely seriously.
“Only a small proportion of complaints are passed on to the Local Government Ombudsman and last year 99.7 per cent of the complaints we received were resolved through our customer feedback and complaints handling policy.
“The council’s cabinet will discuss the full ombudsman’s report at its meeting in October.”
Other complaints upheld by the watchdog include the council failing to properly manage an education, health and care plan for a child, and the handling of a complaint about an assessment of a child by the council’s children’s services care.
In the latter case the ombudsman found no fault with the assessment itself or the complaint investigation, but rather how the complaint was then handled after the investigation finished.
In another two cases the watchdog found the council had agreed to make changes after complaints but had not done so. In one case the agreed remedies had been agreed in 2019 but were still outstanding in 2020. after a complaint and had not yet done so.
In the majority of cases Swindon Borough Council had apologised and made a restorative payment. In some, procedures will be changed to prevent a recurrence.
In its report the ombudsman says the council did not provide a satisfactory remedy to any of the complainants before the watchdog’s involvement. That is a worse performance than similar councils who provided a remedy in one in 10 cases on average.