LA Duty of Care

[grace]

Can anyone advise how we can recover costs from the LA where they have admitted a lack of common duty of care? An independent investigation has demonstrated that they "Got it Wrong" The social worker has been suspended pending Care Standards investigation

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Hi Grace,

I’m one of the advisors at FRG. To make sure I give you the right answer, I would like a little bit more information from you so could you please answer these couple of questions?

1. When you say “recover costs” what do you mean? Do you mean in terms of compensation or in getting backdated
payments of an allowance owed to you?

2. Who did the independent investigation? For example, was this stage 2 of the complaints process; was it the Local
Government Ombudsman, or someone else?

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Best wishes

Suzie

[grace]

Hi Suzie,

Thank you for your response.

It is to recover legal costs incurred as a result of proving that the Social Worker was negligent. She was bias towards the mother and refused to investigate the information provided to her with regard to the treatment of her children (our grandchildren). Some of the evidence was from third party professional bodies. i.e registered nurseries. This resulted in a prolonged case as our solicitor had to prove the information she was providing was corrupt and this escalated all costs for our son.

The Stage 2 investigation was conducted by an independent investigator employed by the LA at our insistence. This took a total of thirteen months and as the LA admitted all the failings we identified there was no need to involve the Ombudsman.

While in the employment of our LA it came to light that the SW had received an admonishment for similar failings whilst working for another authority. We took this information to Head of Family Services who knew nothing about it. However, the letter informing the LA of the admonishment had been sent to the Director of SS who then passed it to the HR department who failed to disseminate the information to the various line managers. As a result there were no arrangements in place to monitor her work.

She has since been suspended by the Care Council and is again under investigation for our case.

Kind Regards


Grace

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Hi Grace,

Thanks for getting back to me. I had thought you meant it was a stage 2 investigation but I didn’t want to presume. The reason I asked is because if it was the LGO, they can recommend that the LA pay you compensation if your complaint is upheld.

The other way to pursue costs/compensation is to make an application for judicial review. This is set out in more detail in our challenging decisions and making complaints advice sheet. It is a complicated area of law however and you should seek specialist legal advice from an administrative and public law solicitor, details of which can be found here at Solicitors Online.

You also mentioned that the social worker has been suspended by the General Social Care Council. Their website gives details of their complaints process also, if you haven’t already been provided with this information.

I hope this helps and good luck with your case.

Best wishes

Suzie

[grace]

Hi Suzie

Thank you for this information.. It has allowed us to search for a specialist solicitor in our area and we have found someone whose testimonial appears to be excellent. We will approach him but obviously we are still concious of further costs, something that we have to consider.

Your advice has been invaluable.

Best Regards

Grace