Gwynedd Council Maladministration 2018.

On the 16th March, 2018, Gwynedd Council's Corporate Director and Head of Social Services, Morwena Edwards, finally responded to our Stage 2 Complaint, nearly 5 months after the completed Report was received by the Council.

The entire process has taken over 10 months to conclude - a process that according to Gwynedd's Statutory Policy should take 28 days.

Our complaint(s) were upheld by the 'Independent' Investigator and her Report - twice sanitised by the Council - still makes for some very interesting reading. But that is for another time.

The Data Breach and censoring of our personal information are currently being investigated as a separate complaint by Gwynedd's Information department. But we have now been told that the Manager is not able to deal with the issue of a senior manager, Melvin Panther, writing disparaging comments about the family to other agencies - so our complaint in this respect is still not concluded.

The official response from the Council is signed off by Morwena Edwards and she attempts to totally whitewash the highly critical Report into her department.

According to the Welsh Government Guidelines on Social Services Complaints, the Council were obliged to offer to meet with us to discuss the report and their response. They have not offered a meeting and as we have yet again been denied the opportunity to discuss the report and their response to it, we wrote in response to the Council.

We pointed out that the Children and Family department attempts to gloss over the systemic failings uncovered by the 'Independent' Investigator and still seek to blame anyone but themselves.

Social Workers and other Council Officers admit that the child's case was allowed 'to drift'.

Our reply to the Corporate Director(s) was that her response is nonsensical and farcical and disregards the failure of Social Workers and the appalling state of record keeping within the Children's department.

During this time, the Ombudsman for Wales has also been investigating Gwynedd Council.

Their Report upholds all our complaints and highlights maladministration and service failure by Gwynedd Social Services going as far back as 2010.

Yet this time Gwynedd Council have held up their hands to the Ombudman's Report and agreed to implement all the recommendations made - including certain officers being retrained in respect of the Council adhering to their Statutory Duties.

The Council would have received the Ombudsman's Report early last week. They have still not contacted us.

Something is so badly wrong within Gwynedd Council.

Cyngor #Gwynedd Council And The Half Term Holiday.

An update to the post of the 9th February - https://gwyneddsfailingcouncil.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/cyngor-gwynedd-council-and-delayed.html  - in relation to the Stage 2 complaint first raised on the 25th May, 2017, on the advice of the Ombudsman for Wales.

Morwena Edwards, Director of Social Services, sent an email at 17.03 possibly to prove that she was not taking her half term holiday early, this year, as I suggested ?

Reading through Gwynedd Council's Statutory Policy it is clear that the Investigation is completed and the Report finalised and with the Ombudsman for Wales even making reference to the Council's 'delayed response' we can only assume that the Director of SS is either misinformed by her complaints officer(s) or she is deliberately misinforming us ?

"I apologise that you have not yet been updated in relation to the progress on your complaint.  As you rightly note, there was a meeting as part of the investigation with the Council officers on the 30^th of January.  Unfortunately, I understand that the Customer Care Officer who made contact with the investigator in relation to timescales for producing the final report and submitting this to the Council, has been away from work with an illness.  Because of this, I have not been provided with the update as expected. 

Following your email, I have asked someone else to contact the Independent investigator to make enquiries and ascertain when the final report is expected by the Council.  Once this reply is received, I will of course provide you with an update.

In your email, you suggest that the Council has had the report for 14 weeks.  I am informed that the Investigator is yet to issue a final report to the Council.  Once this is received, the Council will prepare a formal response to you about your complaint and you will be provided with a copy of the Investigator’s final report."
                                                 *********************

It is now the end of another week - 15 weeks now - since the Council have had the Independent Investigators Report and nearly 9 months since the complaint was raised.

Another week in which Mrs Edwards refuses to answer our questions and, like other council officers involved in this case, blames someone else for the delay.

It is the half term holiday and there will be public employees taking a well earned holiday.
Does that include the Director and ALL the customer care and complaints department dealing with our complaint ?

Forget the update, Morwena and just release the Report. 

Something is so wrong within Gwynedd Council's Social Services.