Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about the Council labelling her child as missing from education. This has not caused sufficient injustice to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Ms X, says the Council should not have opened a child safeguarding case or labelled her child has missing school.

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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:
• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating; or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained; or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement; or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation (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 Ms X and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Ms X says that she requested documents about her and her family from the Council. When she received them, she saw the Council had labelled her child as missing from school and had undertaken some enquires around this. She says it had created a child safeguarding referral on the basis it believed her child was missing from education. She says it should not have labelled her child as missing from school in March 2023. She says in December 2022 she provided the Council with medical evidence explaining her child’s school absence.

Analysis

6. There is not enough injustice caused to Ms X for us to investigate any possible fault here by labelling her child as missing from education or opening a safeguarding referral for this issue.
7. Ms X has a right to ask the Council to amend records which she believes are inaccurate. This is called a ‘right to rectification’. If the Council disagrees with her she can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Parliament set up the ICO to consider data protection disputes which includes ‘right to rectification’ disputes. The ICO are better placed than us to consider if the Council should change its records because there are complex exemptions for child protection case files.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because being labelled as ‘missing from education’ is not significant enough injustice to warrant an investigation. And the ICO are better placed to consider if the Council holds inaccurate information.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman