DUDLEY Council refunded care home top up fees to 30 families after intervention by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, the watchdog’s annual review of complaints has revealed.

The Ombudsman’s report highlighted a case in which the council failed to offer a care home placement within the personal budget it had set, leaving the complainant with no choice but to pay a third-party top-up fee.

The council agreed to apologise and refund the top up fees paid after the Ombudsman upheld the complaint and found fault causing injustice, the report revealed.

The authority was also asked to review its procedures to ensure people were always offered an affordable care home placement within their personal budget.

The report stated that the council agreed and volunteered to make further improvements by carrying out staff training and procedural changes that would help avoid the same faults from recurring.

In addition, to determine if others were similarly affected, the watchdog asked the council to review other cases and, as a result, it reimbursed a further 29 families.

Michael King, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said: “One complaint can have immense power to change things for the better, and we’re increasingly focusing on to how we, and the local authorities we investigate, take the learning from those complaints and improve service provision.

“The vast majority of councils agree to the recommendations we make and see them as common-sense ways of providing better services for people in their area. However this can only happen when councils act swiftly when they have committed to do so.”

The Ombudsman’s figures show that Between April 1, 2021, and March 31 2022, 86 complaints about Dudley Council’s health and social care services were submitted to the Ombudsman, 21 of which underwent detailed investigation. Of those, 67 per cent were upheld (14 in total) which is a slightly lower figure than the 68 per cent uphold rate for complaints for similar authorities.

The figure is also lower than the previous year when 71 per cent of complaints about Dudley Council were upheld between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, following 24 detailed investigations.

Councillor Patrick Harley, council leader, said: “We are pleased to see the Ombudsman has had to deal with fewer complaints in the latest figures compared to the year before it.

“Furthermore, the number of complaints that were upheld is nearly five per cent down.

“It is important that the 21 complaints investigated by the Ombudsman in the year up to March 2022 is set in the context of nearly 1,000 council services and more than 300,000 borough residents.

“We won’t always get things right despite our best intentions, and that is why the Ombudsman is so important and will continue to be. But what we can promise is that we will do our best to ensure all complaints and concerns are listened to and responded to.”

In 2020, an investigation by Newsquest found the council was criticised by the Ombudsman for wrongly charging families for the care of vulnerable relatives between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2019, when nine of 11 such complaints were upheld.

The Ombudsman said families needed to be aware of the availability of placements not requiring top-up fees and that councils can only charge top-ups where a resident explicitly chooses alternative accommodation to that offered by the authority.