CARE home top-up fees for concerned families whose relatives were not offered an affordable placement in Dudley are to be refunded following an investigation by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

Dudley Council has agreed to refund fees after the investigation of a complaint from a man concerned about care home top-up fees he paid for his mother’s care.

The man’s mother, who has dementia, was placed in a care home after a fall.

At the time there were no beds available in homes that did not require the son to pay a top-up fee, over what the council had agreed to pay for his mother’s care.

The son said he was happy for his mother to stay in the care home short-term but would have preferred her to move to an alternative affordable placement in the long-term.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic she remains at the first home, and the son has continued paying a top-up fee.

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Michael King, said: “Our investigation has found no evidence Dudley Council offered the family an affordable placement with an available room, at the time his mother needed to be accommodated. Because of this, the council should not have charged the son a top-up fee.

“We published a public interest report about Dudley Council in 2017 concerning similar issues and at the time it agreed to improve the way it dealt with third-party top-up fees. I am concerned the council has not fully learned from this and we have had to issue this second report.

“I hope the council will now take the learning from these complaints into its long-term practice. The improvements to its procedures it has committed to make, should help to ensure this situation does not arise again.”

The Ombudsman’s role is to remedy injustice and share learning from investigations to help improve public, and adult social care, services.

In this case the council has agreed to apologise to the son and refund the top-up fees paid since his mother entered the care home.

The council has also agreed to review its procedures to ensure people are always offered a care home placement within their personal budget.

It will also review all cases since January 2020 where people entered council-funded residential care and have paid top-ups, to see if refunds are due to anybody not offered an alternative care home that does not require a top-up.

The council has also agreed to apply the same principles to any family that complains they were not offered an available care home placement within their personal budget dating back to 2017.

Councillor Nicolas Barlow, Dudley Council's cabinet member for adult social care, said: “We acknowledge that we need to improve the way we record the choice of care homes offered to people and we have taken a series of pro-active steps that the Ombudsman has acknowledged. The council will continue to work with the Ombudsman to this effect.”

A Stourbridge News data investigation in February 2020 found the authority was among councils with the highest number of complaints about adult social care charges upheld by the Local Government Ombudsman.

Eleven complaints were submitted to the Ombudsman between January 1 2015 and December 31 2019 over the poor handling of charging for care - with nine upheld.