St Helens Council's care home failings during Covid outbreak
- Published
St Helens Council said it was "deeply upset" about the case
A council was at fault following "failings in nutritional care" and infection control measures during a Covid outbreak, an investigation found.
The woman at the centre of the complaint, known as Mrs Y, was in a care home arranged and funded by St Helens Council.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld her daughter's complaints of inadequate nutritional care and infection control measures.
The council said it had apologised.
The complainant, referred to as Mrs X, complained about her late mother's food and fluid intake, inadequate Covid precautions and inadequate complaint handling by the council.
The ombudsman upheld the complaint on 4 October, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.
It found there was fault by the council, with "failings" in nutritional care and in infection control measures during an outbreak of Covid as well as "serious failings" in complaint handling.
'Deeply upset'
The ombudsman's report said the council would apologise, make Mrs X a symbolic £500 payment to reflect her avoidable distress and time and trouble, carry out a quality monitoring visit and review its complaint handling procedures.
The investigator said when a council commissions another organisation to provide services on its behalf it remains responsible for those services and for the actions of the organisation providing them.
"Although I found fault with the actions of the care provider and the council, I have only made recommendations to the council," the ombudsman added.
A council spokesman said: "Our main priority is the safety and wellbeing of residents, so we are deeply upset about what has happened which falls well below the level of standards we expect.
"We have written to the family to express our sincere apologies and have taken into account the recommendations from the ombudsman's report to put measures in place to prevent anything like this happening again."
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