Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council maintaining restrictions on Miss X ‘s contact with her child’s social worker. Any injustice caused is not sufficient to warrant our involvement.

The complaint

1. Miss X said the Council has unnecessarily maintained restrictions on her contact with her child’s social worker despite her not breaching those restrictions since July 2022.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Miss X’s teenage child does not live with her. The Council imposed restrictions on her communications with her child’s social worker. Miss X said this was in 2020 and she has not breached the communication restrictions since July 2022. The Council’s responses to her complaint support what she has said.
6. Communication with her child’s social worker is a separable issue from Miss X’s contact with her child and any limits on this, which have been and could again be subject to court action. Restriction of her communications with the social worker would not have prevented Miss X using her right to go to court to seek different contact arrangements with her child, or to challenge the residence arrangements for her child if she saw fit. The injustice to Miss X would thus have been solely an inability to contact the social worker as she wished. That is not sufficient to warrant investigation by us.

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Final decision

7. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because any injustice caused by the Council’s actions is not sufficient to warrant our involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman