Remedy
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85 The Council and the Trust have accepted that Frank’s care was not of the standard that he and his parents had a right to expect and have outlined the action that has been taken to address the shortcomings identified in the reports that they have commissioned. We have considered this carefully and are satisfied that significant steps have been taken to improve the care provided to patients such as Frank. However, Frank is no longer resident in the Care Home and his parents have pointed out that those changes are of no benefit to him.
86 In establishing an appropriate remedy in this case we have considered a number of factors. It is clear that Frank and his parents have sustained injustice as a consequence of the maladministration identified in this report. Frank did not receive the care that he and his parents had a right to expect, and the lack of adequate care planning meant that he was denied the opportunity to develop to his full potential. Conditions in the Care Home were poor, it seems that staff did not always pay due care and attention to Frank’s physical and personal needs; medication was not monitored adequately. The Trust has accepted this.
87 It is evident that Frank’s parents suffered acute anxiety and distress worrying about him whilst he was resident in the Care Home and physically looking after him themselves from December 2002 to March 2003. While Frank was living at home Mr and Mrs Taylor received no external help or support. It cannot have been easy for them having Frank home at this time, given his depression and panic attacks, and we have no doubt that this put a strain on the whole family. Mr and Mrs Taylor only returned their son to the Council’s care after he had suffered a panic attack on the way home from the day centre. Given that their concerns about Frank’s welfare within the Care Home had yet to be fully addressed, it must have been very difficult for Mr and Mrs Taylor to return Frank to the Council’s care.
88 Mr and Mrs Taylor say that they have also paid for items over a sustained period of time that should have been covered by the Trust from Frank’s benefits. In October 2003 the Trust’s Interim Chief Executive agreed in principle that the Trust should have been responsible for the majority of items listed in Ms B’s report. However, when the Trust subsequently made an offer, that did not cover everything, being limited to those items for which Mr and Mrs Taylor had receipts.
89 To date the Council has offered the sum of £4,500 to Mr and Mrs Taylor by way of redress, and the Trust has advised that it is prepared to increase its initial offer of £6,000 to around £10,000 to cover the disbursements that Frank’s parents have wrongly incurred. We have given careful thought to the injustices suffered by Frank and his parents and consider them to be substantial. Having done so, we do not believe that the offers of compensation made so far by the Council and the Trust provide sufficient remedy.
90 As noted above, there is some disagreement between the Council and the Trust as to their relative responsibilities (especially over funding) for Frank’s care, and we would like to reiterate that we believe they must share equal responsibility. A lack of proper governance arrangements, that has resulted in neither the Trust nor the Council being able to agree where overall responsibility for Frank lay at a crucial point, is a matter for them. Although we recognise that the Council cannot be held responsible for the conditions within the Care Home before it assumed overall managerial responsibility, it has accepted that it should have known about them. The disagreements do not change our conclusions – each is accountable as providers and our view is that they should share the effect of the remedy proposal in terms of compensation.
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91 We recommend that a payment of £32,000 is made. In determining this sum we considered the injustices identified:
- The expenses that Mr and Mrs Taylor paid out unnecessarily while Frank was resident in the Care Home (although they estimate this to be £20,000 in total, it is not now possible to substantiate that this total is comprised exclusively of costs that should have been met by the Care Home. We concluded that a more reasonable sum, in respect of the expenses unnecessarily incurred directly by Mr and Mrs Taylor, is just in excess of £10,000).
- The acute anxiety and distress Frank and his parents must have experienced as a result of the poor standards of care he received whilst he was resident in the Care Home.
- Mr and Mrs Taylor’s efforts in physically looking after him without any external help or support from December 2002 to March 2003 during which time the Care Home was being run and managed by the Council, and the costs that they incurred during this time.
- The distress that the whole episode has caused to Frank, Mr and Mrs Taylor and Frank’s siblings which the Council accepts was compounded by its failure to deal with their initial complaint of September 2002 in an appropriate or timely fashion (paragraph 30).
We therefore recommend that the Trust and the Council each make a payment of £16,000. We leave it to Mr and Mrs Taylor to decide how best to use this payment.
92 Although the Council has questioned why it should be asked to pay £16,000, given that it was not responsible for most of the expenses unnecessarily incurred by Mr and Mrs Taylor, it must take responsibility for the three-month period when Frank was being accommodated at home without support and the costs Mr and Mrs Taylor incurred during this time, as well as the distress and anxiety caused to them. It must also recognise that its failure to deal with their complaints in accordance with the statutory timescales in place at that time further frustrated their attempts to ensure Frank was re-housed in a more appropriate care setting as soon as was possible following their initial request that this was done in September 2002.
