The Director of Cyngor Gwynedd Social Services, Morwena Edwards, has published her Annual report to be presented to the council on the 1st October.
Unlike the Welsh Government's generic report she presented last year, this report gives more detail of the performance of both the Adult and Children departments she is responsible for but like so many reports emenating from this council it doesn't seem to tell the whole story.
On page 31, under the title of Learning and Development, the Director makes mention that -
"The Department has been in contact with the Ombudsman's Office for some years now regarding one specific case....
The Department has received many recommendations from the Ombudsman, and one remains as outstanding; however, slippage has been seen in the work as a result of the Covid-19 crisis."
The Covid-19 crisis is only the latest 'reason' for 'slippage', so somewhat misleading....
(There have been 5 Ombudsman investigation reports into both the Adult and Children departments - in 4 years.)
In June, 2019, the Chief Executive Officer, Dilwyn O Williams, sent a letter to the family apologising for all the failings upheld by the Ombudsman's investigation and informed that the Children's department had agreed to implement the recomendations by September, 2019.
The Ombudsman's recommendation regarding autism is as follows -
"71. The Council should (within three months) seek specialist input to
develop a plan for dealing with future assessment and support requests
from/for those suffering with Autism."
The Council's action to meet this recommendation was to provide the Ombudsman's investigator with a copy of the "Integrated Autism Service (IAS)
North Wales Update- February 2018" and a copy of the "supporting guidance" document.
No specialist input sought. Just yet another attempt to avoid creating any 'pathway' for autistic individuals seeking social services care assessments or support.
This 'evidence' was obviously not sufficient to meet the Ombudsman's recommendation and in
October 2019, an officer of the Ombudsman for Wales contacted the council
for an explanation of why the recommendations had not been completed as
agreed and a phone call was arranged with the director Mrs Edwards to
discuss compliance matters. Even though this call was arranged two weeks
previous, - the council cancelled the call an hour before it was due.
The IAS do not carry out 'care assessments', that is the domain of health and social services, although autism advice can be sought from the IAS during the process.
As robust evidence of compliance was yet to be provided to the Ombudsman, in November 2019, the CEO was summoned to Cardiff to explain the 'slippage' to the Ombudsman, himself, we were also informed that the Ombudsman had other matters to discuss with the CEO.....
(I wonder how much this cost Gwynedd taxpayers claimed as expenses but at least there was an opportunity for the CEO to do some Christmas shopping in the capital.)
Earlier this year, the CEO admitted that the Ombudsman for Wales is 'outraged' with Gwynedd council.
Not that outraged, as Nick Bennett could have published a 'Special Report' as he did with the Wrexham council when they failed to comply with recommendations agreed after an investigation.
All this was many months before the #Covid19 crisis and for the Director of Gwynedd SS to now use the pandemic as an excuse to cover for her departments failings is disingenuous.
When
the pandemic took hold, the Ombudsman for Wales did indeed grant Cyngor
Gwynedd extra time to comply with the recommendations for improvement. On the 11th June 2020, the Ombudsman wrote to the family -
Fair enough - the pandemic has affected everything, though the Gwynedd council staff outing where one officer contracted the virus on a night out forcing an entire council group to self isolate for two weeks was not appreciated by anyone.
The Ombudsman wrote again to the family on the 24th August 2020 -
So why is none of this mentioned in the Director's Annual report ? Sshh....Is it a secret ?
Something is very wrong within Gwynedd council.
