Council apologies for ‘extremely upsetting’ text sent to bereaved family

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Caerphilly County Borough Council has apologised after sending a text message to bereaved parents asking about childcare.

The local authority said an IT error led to the mix-up, for which it offered “sincere apologies” to the family.

A report on council complaints shows “blanket” text messages were sent to parents of children turning two years old, to check their eligibility for free childcare.

“Unfortunately, the SMS was sent to parents whose daughter sadly passed away” a year earlier, the council said in its report.

“The investigation found that while a marker had been placed against the family to ensure no correspondence relating to the child was issued, an error within the IT system did not stop the SMS reaching the parents.”

The council went on to accept the incident would have been “extremely upsetting” for the family.

The matter was raised at a meeting of the council’s governance committee, where Cllr Ceri Wright urged the local authority to “make sure errors like that were stopped [and] wouldn’t happen to other people”.

Following the meeting, a council spokesperson said: “We have written to the parents offering our deepest and sincere apologies for this extremely upsetting incident. 

“An investigation found that an error occurred within our IT system and immediate action has been taken to identify the source of the problem.”