Summary: the Council failed to fully include Mr B when considering a child protection case, delayed providing him with reports and minutes, failed to keep adequate case recordings, failed to comply with contact orders and delayed responding to his complaint. This left Mr B feeling he had not been treated fairly and impartially and undermined his confidence in the Council, as well as leading to him to go to time and trouble to pursue his complaint. The actions the Council has taken to address the procedural issues, completion of the outstanding action in relation to a social worker and an apology and payment to Mr B is satisfactory remedy for the injustice caused.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mr B, complained the Council:
• failed to treat him fairly and impartially during its involvement with his family;
• failed to properly explain the process to him or give him an opportunity to have his views included in reports;
• failed to provide him with copies of reports and minutes of meetings in a timely manner;
• delayed progressing the case;
• failed to keep proper records;
• failed to act in accordance with court orders relating to contact for his children with their mother;
• delayed responding to his complaints; and
• failed to follow the recommendations from the stage two investigation.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
3. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with a Council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. As part of the investigation, I have:
• considered the complaint and Mr B's comments;
• made enquiries of the Council and considered the comments and documents the Council provided;
• considered Mr B’s comments on my draft decision; and
• gave the Council an opportunity to comment on my draft decision.
6. Under the information sharing agreement between the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), we will share this decision with Ofsted.

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What I found

Background

7. Mr B’s children were living with his ex-partner until January 2017. The children moved in with Mr B in January 2017 when his ex-partner went to live in a refuge.
8. The Council held a child in need meeting on 2 February 2017 and decided to move to a child in need plan. A social worker visited Mr B on 13 February. Mr B told the social worker he would wait to arrange contact between his ex-partner and his children until after they had been to court.
9. On 15 February Mr B raised concerns the social worker was biased and supporting his ex-partner. Mr B said he felt pressured to allow his ex-partner contact with his children. The team manager told Mr B to stop contact if he felt it was abusive. The team manager told Mr B the Council could arrange contact if he wanted that and could help with a schedule of expectations around contact.
10. The Council held a strategy discussion on 15 February and began a section 47 investigation.
11. On 24 February the court considered the case and decided the children would live with Mr B and have unsupervised contact with their mother. The court named the times for contact.
12. On 25 February Mr B told the Council his ex-partner had arrived 40 minutes late for contact. Mr B raised concerns his ex-partner had brought her new partner with her and Mr B understood he had convictions.
13. On 28 February the social worker discussed the case in supervision and decided to complete a section 37 report for court to consider contact and residence. The Council also decided to arrange a conference to decide whether to move to a child protection plan to safeguard the children. The Council decided to undertake hair strand testing on both parents.
14. On 10 March the school told the Council since the children moved in with Mr B his son had attended school on time, wearing suitable clothing, having completed the home school diary and homework. The school reported Mr B had attended parents evening.
15. On 14 March the Council placed the children on child protection plans under the category of emotional harm.
16. A core group meeting took place on 27 March.
17. On 4 April a legal planning meeting took place. At that meeting the Council decided it could not support the child arrangement order as further time was needed for assessment.
18. At a court hearing on 18 April the court decided to keep the contact arrangements largely the same.
19. At a supervision meeting on 19 April the Council agreed the parents should not have direct or indirect contact in the presence of the children. The Council noted it had received the hair strand tests which showed cocaine and cannabis use for all adults. Further hair strand testing was planned. The Council also noted it had received information from Mr B’s GP about his mental health which raised no concerns. The supervision session noted the children were happy living with Mr B.
20. On 24 April the social worker carried out a statutory visit to Mr B’s children. This was partly to inform the parenting assessment for Mr B. Mr B raised concerns his children were being emotionally manipulated by their mother.
21. The Council assigned the case to a new social worker on 2 May. That social worker visited Mr B on 10 May.
22. On 17 May a neighbour of Mr B’s ex-partner agreed to facilitate the handover of the children.
23. The Council’s social worker visited Mr B on 24 May and spoke to him on 1 June.
24. On 5 June Mr B’s ex-partner applied to the court as she said Mr B was not adhering to the contact arrangements.
25. A review child protection conference took place on 5 June.
26. A core group meeting took place on 13 June. At that meeting Mr B asked for contact to be supervised as he was concerned about his ex-partner communicating with an unsuitable person.
27. The Council held a strategy meeting on 14 June. That was due to an allegation Mr B’s ex-partner was maintaining relationships with risky adults. The meeting decided all contact should be supervised. The Council also decided to begin care proceedings.
28. Following the contact session on 15 June Mr B’s children refused to get into the social worker’s car. Due to that Mr B’s ex-partner returned the children to Mr B’s house. Mr B raised concerns about that.
29. Further hair strand testing took place on 20 June.
30. On 22 June the Council decided the threshold was met to issue care proceedings.
31. On 27 June the Council’s social worker discussed with Mr B the arrangements for sports day. As Mr B argued it was his turn to attend the sports day the social worker decided to consult the schools to get a clear picture of who was at the last event. By that point though Mr B’s ex-partner was already at the school. Mr B said the Council should report his ex-partner to the courts for breaching the order. The social worker asked to see Mr B to hand him the letter to issue care proceedings. Mr B said he did not want his children present when he received the letter as he would want to discuss the contents.
32. Core group meetings took place on 13 July, 21 August and 25 September, followed by a child in need meeting on 13 November which Mr B attended.
33. On 29 June 2018 the court issued a child arrangements order. Under that order Mr B’s ex-partner has supervised contact once a month at a contact centre and another contact once a month to be supervised by another person. The court ordered the Council to pay for the contact centre for three months and then Mr B’s ex-partner would have to pay for contact herself.
34. The Council closed the case on 8 August.

Chronology for the complaints process

35. Mr B put in a complaint on 21 February 2017. The Council responded to that on 3 March. Mr B asked for the complaint to go to the next stage. The Council suggested a meeting but Mr B asked for the complaint to go to stage two.
36. The Council appointed a stage two investigator on 6 April. The stage two investigating officer met with Mr B on 3 May and interviewed officers in July and August. The investigating officer produced the stage two report on 15 December. The Council told Mr B it had received the report and would provide it to him by 11 January 2018. The Council sent Mr B a further holding letter on 15 January. Mr B chased the Council for the report on 26 January. The Council then wrote Mr B on 6 February to respond to the stage two report and provide Mr B with an action plan.
37. On 6 March 2018 Mr B asked for his complaint to go to stage three. Mr B also said the Council had not actioned some recommendations. The Council offered Mr B an adjudication meeting which took place 4 April. The Council wrote to Mr B on 1 May to respond to his concerns. Mr B told the Council he wanted his complaint to go to stage three. The Council declined at that point due to ongoing court proceedings.
38. On 4 July Mr B told the Council the court proceedings had completed. Mr B therefore asked the Council to take his complaint to stage three. Mr B chased the Council on 17 July. On 27 July the Council told Mr B it had arranged for an independent panel to review his complaint on 28 August. However, that later had to be rearranged. The panel took place on 11 October.
39. On 12 November Mr B chased the Council for the outcome of his stage three complaint. The Council responded on 23 November, although the post office returned that letter to the Council. The Council reissued it in December.

Stage two/three findings

40. The stage two investigation concluded:
• on the balance of probabilities the first social worker in the case did not take note of the evidence, encouraged contact and told Mr B it would look bad for him in court if he did not allow contact. That view was reached based on the lack of case recordings by the social worker;
• the Council failed to put in place a written agreement with Mr B’s ex-partner to set clear expectations and improve the experience of contact sessions;
• the Council was not at fault for failing to facilitate contact through a contact centre because within two weeks the court ordered unsupervised contact;
• the first social worker acted inappropriately by interviewing Mr B in a public hallway which could be heard by his neighbours and the children;
• a new social worker allocated to the case inappropriately recommended overnight unsupervised contact without any evidence or risk assessment;
• Mr B’s complaint about lack of response to his calls was partially upheld. That was because the investigation had uncovered other failures relating to communication;
• the Council failed to respond to a second complaint;
• there were a number of changes of social worker and things could have been done to minimise the effects, such as handover meetings and goodbye meetings;
• there was no evidence the Council had shared minutes of meetings with all parties;
• the Council failed to provide the report for the review child protection conference to Mr B until the evening before conference;
• because Mr B only received the report for the review child protection conference the night before he could not contribute his views;
• the Council failed to arrange a meeting to provide Mr B with a letter telling him it had issued proceedings for a care order;
• due to poor practice, drift and delay the work completed by the Council was not child-centred;
• reports have not always fully represented Mr B's views;
• there was less than full reporting about the progress Mr B had made with reducing his use of cannabis;
• the fact Mr B had not always been able to contribute his views and the recordings about his attitude led Mr B to feel the Council were not impartial given the lack of similar recordings about his ex-partner; and
• reports failed to record the fact Mr B’s ex-partner had bleached her hair which was a clear indication of hair strand test avoidance concerning drug use whereas the information included about Mr B’s tests was selective which meant the reporting was not balanced and unbiased.

Action plan

41. Stage three agreed the following action plan:
• Issue a letter of apology to Mr B;
• remind the current social worker of the need to share information appropriately with parents and work in an open and transparent way;
• remind the social worker of the need to share reports with parents before conference;
• for the current social worker to receive further training in balanced report writing;
• reminder to all staff of the need for minutes of core group meetings to be shared with parents and other professionals;
• remind staff of the need to ensure procedures and timescales for section 47 investigations and escalation to child protection conferences are robustly followed; and
• remind staff of the need for accurate case recording.

Action the Council says it has taken to put the action plan into effect

42. The Council says it has done the following to put the action plan into effect:
• regular discussions in supervision with staff/team managers and in team meetings about the need to share documents appropriately and in a timely manner;
• introduction of a quality assurance process which means records of visits, reports and assessments are overseen by a manager and signed off;
• concerns about gaps in recording are raised with individual social workers who are then expected to correct the records before authorisation;
• introduction of a child in need audit record template where team managers are expected to complete up to 10 mini audits per week to highlight gaps in recording, direct work/child's voice and records;
• recording actions linked to a complaint on an audit tracker which is monitored. Even if communication with the customer has concluded the complaints and compliments team do not close the complaint record until all the agreed actions and learning have been implemented. It remains active on their weekly management report;
• agency workers can sign up for bite-size training and have access to the Council’s training website. Training can be recommended where appropriate if an agency member of staff has been implicated in a complaint;
• where it is not practicable to have separate meetings for parents social workers will discuss with the manager whether alternative arrangements can be made;
• team awayday to look at lessons learned from complaints and barriers impacting on practice. Part of that will look at effective communication/role of the absent parent/case recording/effective meetings including venues/attendees.
43. The Council says it is still willing to consider tutoring support for Mr B’s children if he wants to pursue that.

Analysis

44. Mr B says the Council failed to treat him fairly and impartially during its involvement with his family. As evidence of that Mr B refers to the Council’s social worker producing unbalanced reports and suggesting he could not meet his children’s needs. I refer in paragraph 39 to the stage two investigator’s findings. That includes some conclusions about the reports produced for court. As I said in paragraph 3, the Ombudsman cannot comment on matters on which a court has adjudicated. So, any concerns Mr B has about the unbalanced nature of reports considered by the court fall outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. I therefore cannot comment on the content of those reports. That includes Mr B’s concern about the Council’s conclusion he could not meet his children’s needs. Had Mr B wanted to challenge the contents of those reports or comments made by social workers about him which he considers inaccurate in those reports he would have needed to make those representations during the court process.
45. For the reports produced for the initial and review child protection conferences I note the reports refer to the improvements in Mr B’s children’s presentation since they moved to live with him. There is, however, reference in the May 2017 report to Mr B’s drug use. The report does not include reference to the hair strand report which showed reducing levels of drugs in Mr B’s system, in line with what he had told social workers. I understand Mr B’s concern about that report failing to record the relevant information which would have made conference members aware what he had said about his drug use was accurate. I have seen no evidence this omission affected the way the Council handled the case. Nevertheless, failure to include the relevant information in the report is fault. I consider this left Mr B justifiably distressed and it is unlikely it encouraged him to believe the Council was dealing with him fairly.
46. Mr B says the Council did not properly explain the process to him or give him an opportunity to have his views incorporated into reports. The stage two investigation has already upheld that part of the complaint about the reports. In particular, the stage two investigator noted the Council did not provide Mr B with the initial child protection conference report until the evening before the conference which prevented him having an input. The Council’s procedure says it should provide reports to parents 3-5 working days before the conference takes place. Failure to do that is fault. I am satisfied this meant Mr B had to stay up late to try to absorb the content of the report before the meeting and prevented him raising any concerns about the content of the report. Delay providing Mr B with the report is fault.
47. For the failure to properly explain the process the Council accepts it did not follow its procedure when sending Mr B a letter to tell him it intended to issue care proceedings. The Council says its procedure requires the letter be given at a meeting or a meeting be arranged immediately after the letter is sent. That did not happen in this case. Failure to follow the Council’s process is fault. Given the emotive nature of the letter the Council provided Mr B with it is likely sending him that letter without giving him an opportunity to discuss its contents with the Council caused him significant distress. It is clear from the documentary records Mr B believed the Council was always intending to have his children taken into care. That is a view the Council might have been able to reassure Mr B about had it given him the letter at a meeting.
48. Mr B says the Council failed to provide him with copies of reports and minutes of meeting in a timely manner. For the reports produced for court, that is not a matter the Ombudsman can comment on. If Mr B had concerns about sharing information as part of court proceedings he would have needed to raise those matters at court. However, as I said earlier, the Council has accepted it did not provide Mr B with a copy of the report for the initial child protection conference until the night before the meeting. There is also no evidence of when minutes were sent to Mr B and the stage two investigator upheld the complaint as other professionals had said they routinely did not receive minutes. I see no reason to disagree with those conclusions. Failure to provide Mr B with minutes of meetings is fault, as is the failure to provide a copy of the report for the initial child protection conference until the evening of the day before the meeting.
49. Mr B says the Council delayed presenting evidence to court and often sent social workers to court with no knowledge of the case. Mr B says that unnecessarily lengthened proceedings. As I said in paragraph 3, anything relating to court proceedings fall outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. I therefore cannot comment on the delays in presenting evidence to court or the Council’s decision to send social workers to court who did not have enough knowledge of the case. If Mr B wanted to raise concerns about those matters he would have needed to bring that to the attention of the court.
50. Mr B says the Council failed to keep proper records. This is a matter that has already been upheld at stage two and I see no reason to reach a different conclusion. As the stage two investigator noted, one of the social workers assigned to the case made few entries and it is likely many of the communications with Mr B were not recorded. That is fault.
51. Mr B says the Council failed to act in accordance with court orders about contact for his children. The stage two investigation again upheld this complaint. In particular, the stage two investigation noted professionals had reported the Council not telling them in advance about what contact would involve. The stage two investigation also identified occasions when Mr B’s ex-partner was present when the children were returned to him, in breach of the court order. I see no reason to reach a different conclusion than that already reached by the Council. Failure to ensure contact was arranged in accordance with contact orders is fault. It is clear this led to Mr B feeling frustrated and again believing the Council was favouring his ex-partner over him. It is also clear on occasion this had an impact on Mr B’s children, given Mr B has a difficult relationship with his ex partner and animosity is regularly shown between them.
52. Mr B says the Council delayed responding to his complaints. The Council accepts it delayed responding to the stage two and three complaints. That delay is fault. I am satisfied this meant Mr B had to go to time and trouble to pursue his complaint when he should not have had to. It is also unlikely to have encouraged Mr B to believe the Council was taking his concerns seriously.
53. Mr B says the Council failed to comply with the recommendations from stage two. In contrast the Council says it has complied with the recommendations and I set out in paragraph 42 the action the Council has taken to put the action plan into effect. For those parts of the action plan which concern a specific social worker the Council cannot provide the documentary evidence to show those actions were put into place. In the absence of any documentary records I cannot say the Council put the recommendations relating to reminders to the social worker and further training into place. That is fault. The Council has committed to ensure the issues are discussed with the social worker for their continual learning and development. I welcome that.
54. I have, however, seen a selection of notes from supervision meetings with other social workers. Those notes confirm discussions have taken place about progressing cases, sharing information with parents, producing reports in a timely manner to allow professionals and parents time to comment, increased management supervision, progressing cases to initial child protection conferences, involving the absent parent and selecting a venue for meetings. I have also seen a copy of the new form for requesting an audit which team managers will complete each week to identify gaps in recording and involvement of the child. The Council has also confirmed a team away day was planned to look at the lessons from complaints which includes effective communication, role of the absent parent, case recordings, effective meetings and venues. I am therefore satisfied the Council has put the requirements of the action plan in place, with the exception of the social worker involved in this case, which the Council will now action. That the Council has taken action following the learning from this complaint does not mean Mr B has not continued to experience some issues. However, I am satisfied the Council has in place a plan to improve practice, in line with what it agreed to do as part of the learning from Mr B’s complaint. I therefore have no grounds to criticise it.
55. So, I have found fault in that the Council failed to properly involve Mr B in the process, did not fairly represent him in reports, failed to give him an opportunity to comment on reports, failed to keep proper records, failed to ensure Mr B’s ex-partner acted in accordance with court orders on contact and delayed responding to his complaint. Those failures meant Mr B lost faith in the Council as he believed it was favouring his ex-partner over him and not treating him fairly. It also caused Mr B significant frustration and led to him having to go to time and trouble to pursue his complaint. In addition to the procedural changes I refer to in paragraphs 41 and 42 I recommended the Council apologise to Mr B and pay him £500. The Council has agreed to that.

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Recommended action

56. Within one month of my decision the Council should:
• apologise to Mr B and pay him £500; and
• address the issues with the social worker which arose out of the Council’s stage two investigation, which I refer to in paragraph 41.

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Final decision

57. I have completed my investigation and uphold the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman