Showing posts with label morwena edwards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label morwena edwards. Show all posts

Tuesday 27 April 2021

"No Matter What The Wish Of The Individual May Be" - Cyngor Gwynedd Council.

With regard to the previous post, the Corporate Director of Cyngor Gwynedd council SS departments, Morwena Edwards, has given her explanation of the statements made to the Care Scrutiny Committee by the CEO, Dilwyn Williams and the senior complaints manager, Dafydd Paul, in particular - bearing in mind the Ombudsman for Wales has denied instructing the council.

"The Ombudsman is correct in his replies to your queries that he did not explicitly request that Gwynedd Council contact you by telephone to offer and/or arrange these assessments."

Interesting wording - and they were anything but queries...
Morwena continues - 

"However, the Ombudsman’s office was clear that they expected us to be pro
active in response to their findings that we provide these assessments.After obtaining legal advice, o
ur interpretation of the Ombudsman’s recommendation led us to conclude that contacting you directly to offer you and your family the comprehensive assessment of your needs referred to above was the most appropriate course of action. This action was taken in good faith as part of our sincere effort to meet the terms of the Ombudsman’s recommendation.I wish to sincerely apologise for the confusion and distress that the subsequent telephone call to you on 14/11/19 caused, and I accept that we should have taken into account that you had previously requested that communication between your family and the Council should only be conducted via email.In response to your second point above,  

I acknowledge that the quote from the transcript you provided of Mr Paul’s statement to the Care Scrutiny Committeeon 14/11/19 is what was conveyed to the Committee."

So did the senior complaints manager mislead Councillors of the Committee?

"However, I must disagree with your assertion that his statement was made deliberately to mislead the Committee in some way about how Gwynedd Council were intending to meet the Ombudsman’s recommendations contained in his report." 

But, if the Ombudsman had given the council no such instruction why did the officer spend so much time telling Councillors that he had ?
"...
the Ombudsman has judged this and wants us to go no matter what the wish of the individual may be..."

"Mr Paul’s statement to the Committee is consistent with the prevailing interpretation of this specific recommendation from the Ombudsman by Gwynedd Council at that time. In order to meet the recommendation, we decided that all methods be explored in order to comprehensively assess your family’s needs."

'...consistent with the prevailing interpretation...' What. does. that. even. mean ?
Regardless - the Ombudsman has denied the words of Dafydd Paul -

"given them a further challenge, to make sure that someone goes to see the family, meet the family, ensure that they receive that assessement and that is something that we have now arranged with the adult services, to go into that situation on the Ombudsman's behalf, despite the fact that they have not expressed a wish to receive the service, our usual ethos involves intervention but only if the person invites us in and wishes for us to intervene in this way, the Ombudsman has judged this and wants us to go no matter what the wish of the individual may be, so that is now our response to that challenge provided by the Ombudsman." (translated)

Morwena Edwards continues -
"The action of being proactive in offering you and your family these assessments was seen as vital to meeting the Ombudsman’s directions, and was interpreted as being a requirement implicitly arising from that recommendation." 


There is that word 'interpretation' again. Anyway the recommendation referred to has been ignored since 2010, and again in 2017. Two social worker's were assigned to carry out that task in 2018, alongside another Ombudsman's recommendation. After completing one piece of work - badly - they did not return as they had said they would.

The Ombudsman has called the Director's thinking as 'illogical' in a past investigation. What could be said now ?

Something is seriously wrong within Gwynedd council.

 Fiber, Yarn, Skein, Red Yarn, Wool Yarn, Closeup


Wednesday 30 September 2020

Autism Pathway ? - Cyngor Gwynedd Director Of SS Annual Report.

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.