SS.. No Further Action recorded

[Colin_1705]

I have just been reading an article about Flintshire county council in the daily post.

Apparently a number of cases referred o them get marked as "No further action"

The question remains though "Do they tell the subject of the referral that NFA will be taken". And do they tell the referring agency what they have done and why?

It seems to me that Social Services needs to be taken away from Local Authorities and given to a New body entirely

[bowlingbun]

When my son was younger, and living at home, I desperately needed regular respite care. Nothing was provided for 2 years, ultimately he became a boarder at school then college etc. Years later, I learned from a later care manager that my application for respite had effectively been turned into NFA. Rather than fund one day a week SSD ended up funding 7 days a week.
In my area, those with LD seldom have an allocated SW any more. How is someone with LD speech and learning difficulties supposed to contact SSD? In the old days with small local teams, although his speech was imperfect, I'm sure the local team would have been able to work out who he was. Now there is a county wide call centre, wait varies to up to 15 minutes, then call handlers have to ask all sorts of questions before putting someone through to someone else. M wouldn't have a hope in hell of even identifying himself.

[Colin_1705]

And I very much doubt that the call handlers have adequate training or knowledge

[bowlingbun]

Colin, you are absolutely right. In theory they have access to all client records, and in theory any small problem will be solved immediately. However, I lost someone's phone number, so rang the call centre (social workers don't give their own numbers any more on letters, just the call centre number) and asked them the name of the person I spoke to, and could I be put through please. Obviously I'm ringing concerning my son, and so they need to access his file, and as I'm not him we go through all his details, and all my details (which they aren't supposed to do!) and then put me through to the admin clerk in the next team. That admin clerk does NOT have access to client files, so can't help anyhow!!!! All she can do is email the person concerned, which of course the call centre person could have done anyhow. I thin that series of calls was the one that took over an hour in total. What a waste of time and money.

[Colin_1705]

In my experience try are totally slapdash in everything they do.

Letters, phone calls, time of appointments. Nothing is correct and nothing is accurate

[Colin_1705]

A month or so ago, a letter was wrongly delivered to my address.
My number and my block address but not my name and not my post code. It was from my county council, the direct line phone number was visible through the window, so I rang that number but it was pparently a business phone, so wrong number.

So, to be helpful to the correct addressee, I took it to the address that I thought it was for, and handed it to another resident to pass it on to him