Haringey (Parliament Politics Magazine) – An investigation found Haringey Council’s social work department missed over 1,100 emails raising concerns about vulnerable residents’ welfare.
During a local government and social care ombudsman investigation into Haringey council, the messages which included over 500 police welfare reports were found.
Following grievances over the council’s handling of safeguarding concerns regarding a man who experiences frequent seizures, the investigation was started.
In June 2023, the man’s acquaintance, who went by the name Mr. Y, first expressed worries about his well-being.
The council was also regularly made aware of his living conditions and vulnerability by the emergency services.
In September 2023, Mr. Y’s landlord issued an eviction notice due to the damage he did to his house during his frequent seizures.
In June 2024, when the emergency services expressed worries about Mr. Y, a social worker was finally assigned to the case.
Following a fall in September 2024, Mr. Y was sent to the hospital after social services failed to get in touch with him.
A year after initially voicing concerns and receiving no response, Mr. Y’s buddy called the council to inform them that he was going to be evicted and to report that he had sustained a life-altering injury in the most recent incident.
At the end of October 2024, Mr. Y was forced to leave.
Later, the council admitted that its handling of the complaints was insufficient and sent Mr. Y’s friend to the Ombudsman.
Further investigations revealed the council had over 1,100 unopened emails in its social work department inbox, including over 500 police reports, raising fears that the council’s shortcomings might have impacted additional vulnerable individuals.
The council has also not confirmed how many individuals the missed emails related to, what timeframe the emails covered and how many relevant cases have now been dealt with.
Ombudman Julie Odams described the case of Mr Y as “shocking”.
She said:
“Because of the council’s inertia, the man at the centre of this case was left at risk of significant harm.
While we cannot say the accident which caused such a major injury would have been prevented if the council had acted sooner, the man’s friends and family are left not knowing whether things might have turned out differently if he’d had the help he needed earlier.
The council has agreed to put in place an action plan to improve how it responds to safeguarding alerts like these, including training staff on dealing with safeguarding referrals. I hope this shocking case will spur the council into making lasting changes which will benefit other vulnerable people in the borough.”
The ombudsman recommended that the council pay Mr Y £2,000 for “leaving him at risk of harm” and pay his friend £200 to “acknowledge the time and trouble she has spent pursuing this complaint”.
The council was also told it should review its safeguarding policy to avoid similar failings.
Lucia das Neves, Haringey council cabinet member for health, social care and wellbeing, said:
“We recognise the seriousness of the findings and fully accept that mistakes were made, for which we apologise.
We should have responded more swiftly when concerns were raised about the neighbour’s health and vulnerability. A series of actions have already been undertaken to address the concerns raised about our handling of this case and we have cleared the backlog of unread emails highlighted in the report.
We are approaching this with honesty, accountability, and a clear focus on improvement.
The council is committed to learning from this case, and we are carrying out an independent review of our safeguarding arrangements to ensure that we are delivering the highest standards of care and support to our residents.”
What actions has Haringey taken since the report was published?
The council accepted the results publicly, issued an apology for the failures, and accepted there was a very serious omission by the social work department.
Haringey committed to independent reviews of its safeguarding policies and practices so that systemic failings could be identified and addressed, hence preventing future problems from happening due to not reading emails, and better attention to areas where things could be improved.
The council drew up, and is commencing, an action plan to recreate a backlog of unread emails and welfare inquiries with the purpose of strengthening their practices and procedures in order to prevent this from happening again.
The training of staff on their safeguarding responsibilities and the management of referral alerts will be prioritized to help ensure actions are appropriately taken in relation to the welfare concerns of vulnerable residents.