The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: The Council is at fault for refusing to this complaint under the children’s statutory complaints procedure. It has now agreed to consider the complaint and provide the complainant with a response within a month.
The complaint
The complainant, who I will call Miss X, complains about how the Council’s children’s services dealt with matters relating to her children who are looked after. Miss X complained to the Ombudsman after the Council refused to consider her complaint due to court proceedings.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended) Under our information sharing agreement, we will share the final decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted).
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The statutory complaints procedure The law sets out a three-stage procedure for councils to follow when looking at complaints about children’s social care services. The accompanying statutory guidance, Getting the Best from Complaints, explains councils’ responsibilities in more detail.
The first stage of the procedure is local resolution. Councils have up to 20 working days to respond.
If a complainant is not happy with a council’s stage one response, they can ask that it is considered at stage two. At this stage of the procedure, councils appoint an investigator and an independent person who is responsible for overseeing the investigation. Councils have up to 13 weeks to complete stage two of the process from the date of request.
If a complainant is unhappy with the outcome of the stage two investigation, they can ask for a stage three review by an independent panel. The Council must hold the panel within 30 days of the date of request, and then issue a final response within 20 days of the panel hearing.
What happened In May 2022, Miss X complained to the Council about matters relating to the care of her children, who are looked after. The Council told Miss X it could not investigate her complaint because of ongoing court proceedings. It subsequently told the Ombudsman that the proceedings finished last year, but it considered the issues Miss X raised in her complaint to be ones that should have been raised within the court proceedings.
Analysis Having considered Miss X’s complaint to the Council, I note that some of the issues raised are about things that the Council has or hasn’t done since the court proceedings, and some of the issues are suitable for investigation under the statutory procedure and I therefore conclude that the Council has not properly considered what it can or cannot investigate under this procedure.
The Council’s failure to properly consider Miss X’s complaint under the statutory procedure is fault which has caused Miss X a relatively short delay in receiving answers to questions that she raised.
Agreed action
The Council has agreed that within one month of the date of my final decision, it will complete its investigation at stage one of the statutory complaint process and write to Miss X with the outcome. It should fully address the points it feels it can consider and explain why it feels it cannot address other points. The Council should advise Miss X how she can escalate her complaint to stage two of the procedure if she remains dissatisfied with the Council’s response.
Final decision
We uphold this complaint with a finding of fault causing an injustice.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman