Summary: Mrs X complained about how the Council dealt with a parenting assessment and psychological assessment to inform a decision about returning her children to her care. There was no fault in the way the parenting assessment was carried out. There was delay in carrying out the psychological assessment which caused frustration and anxiety and delay in returning the children to Mrs X. The Council has agreed a suitable remedy.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complained that:
1. the parenting assessment carried out in 2017 was flawed as it gave too much weight to out-of-date psychological reports;
2. there was delay in carrying out a new psychological assessment as recommended following the parenting assessment in July 2017;
3. the Council failed to take adequate steps to obtain her children's views about contact and where they would like to live.

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What I have investigated

2. I have investigated the first two parts of the complaint. I explain at the end of this statement why I have not investigated the third part.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1), 26A(1) and 34(3), as amended)
4. 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)
5. We have discretion to decide whether to start or discontinue an investigation into a complaint or part of a complaint within our jurisdiction. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 24A(6) and 34B(8), as amended).
6. 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)
7. The law sets out a three stage procedure for councils to follow when looking at complaints about children’s social care services. At stage 2 of this procedure, the Council appoints an Independent Investigator and an Independent Person (who is responsible for overseeing the investigation). If a complainant is unhappy with the outcome of the stage 2 investigation, they can ask for a stage 3 review. If a council has investigated something under this procedure, the Ombudsman would not normally re-investigate it unless he considers the investigation was flawed. However, he may look at whether a council properly considered the findings and recommendations of the independent investigation.

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How I considered this complaint

8. I discussed the complaint with Mrs X and considered the information she provided. I considered the information the Council provided in response to my enquiries. I shared my draft decision with the Council and the complainant and considered their responses.
9. We agreed to investigate this complaint even though Mrs X had not completed stage 3 of the children’s social care complaints procedure. This was because of the difficult family circumstances she was undergoing at the time. We did not consider it appropriate to expect her to have to go through another stage of the complaints process.
10. 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

What happened

Background

11. Mrs X has three children, C3, C4 and C5, who were in foster care from 2003 until June 2019. C3 and C5 have a life-limiting degenerative health condition. The children’s father died suddenly in January 2013. Mrs X’s mental health declined and she struggled to look after the children. In August 2013 the Council accommodated the children with Mrs X’s agreement. In May 2014 the Council obtained Care Orders for them. The plan was for long-term foster care. Mrs X’s two older children, C1 and C2, were living elsewhere.
12. As part of the planning for the children’s future a psychological assessment of Mrs X was carried out by a consultant clinical psychologist, Dr K. The report noted past problems in the family that had had an impact on the children. It also noted that Mrs X had been diagnosed with a personality disorder, and that the children were vulnerable and needed above-average care. The report noted some positive aspects of Mrs X’s care for the children. But it concluded she was not yet in a position to meet their needs.
13. The Council decided the children should not return to Mrs X at that stage. The three youngest children continued to live in foster care and C2 with his father. Mrs X had supervised contact with the children. By late 2015 Mrs X felt her mental health was more stable. She was working and had started a new relationship with Mr Y. She asked the Council to assess her to see if the children could come back to live with her.
14. The Council asked Dr K to carry out a review of his earlier assessment. Dr K’s report concluded that Mrs X had shown “some genuine improvements in her psychological functioning” since the previous assessment. He found she was now more emotionally stable and had better insight into her parenting style. However he said some questions and concerns remained. His report issued in December 2015 recommended a parenting assessment for Mrs X individually and for her and Mr Y together as a couple.

Parenting assessment

15. In April 2016 Mrs X and Mr Y got married. Mrs X again told the Council she would like the children returned to her care. The Council said they would need to have been married for several months before they could be assessed. The Council made the referral for the assessment in January 2017. A Family Assessment Practitioner, Officer B, carried out the assessments. She interviewed Mrs X and Mr Y separately and together, reviewed case records, and observed contact sessions with the children. She produced her report in July 2017. Officer B found Mrs X had made significant changes to her life that would have a positive impact on her ability to care for her children. However she still had concerns about Mrs X’s capacity to meet the children’s emotional needs, given the extent of the damage and trauma they had been exposed to in the past. The report recommended:
• a multi-agency professionals meeting to discuss the findings and decide the next steps
• a further psychological assessment by the previous psychologist, Dr K
• a review of Mrs X’s mental health records to establish her diagnosis and confirm professionals’ involvement with her to date
• an independent advocate for the children to establish their views.
16. The Council considered that an updated psychological assessment would help give Children’s Social Care a greater understanding of any risks or potential issues relating to Mrs X’s mental health. It felt that without a further assessment it would be difficult to have a full picture of the short and long-term implications of her health. So it would be difficult to assess the risks of any possible future changes.
17. Following the parenting assessments the Council held a professionals meeting in August 2017 and decided the children should not return to live with Mrs X yet. The Council had meetings with Mrs X and Mr Y to inform them of the decision and discuss it with them. This meant there were no plans at this stage to arrange a new psychological assessment.
18. Mrs X made a formal complaint to the Council in October 2017. She disagreed with the outcome of the parenting assessment. She complained that it was not carried out fairly. She said it relied too heavily on old psychological assessments and did not take enough account of changes made in her life. She complained that the Council had not contacted her GP or her employer as part of the assessment.
19. After holding meetings with Mr and Mrs X in November and December 2017 to discuss the complaint, the Council sent them a written response in January 2018. The Council said it considered the assessment was balanced and made clear recommendations for further support and assessment. It said a parenting assessment would not normally involve seeking medical records or information from employers. But this could be considered as part of the Council’s wider assessment about whether to return the children. It said it had received further information from her since the assessment which the Council would consider. The Council says it was in dealing with this complaint that the Service Manager decided to commission a new psychological assessment.
20. Mrs X was not happy with the result of the complaint and asked to go to stage 2 of the procedure in February 2018. The Council appointed the investigating team, and the stage 2 report was issued in October 2018. I refer to the outcome of the complaint later in this statement.

Further psychological assessment

21. At the same time the Council started the process of arranging the psychological assessment recommended in the parenting assessment report. During this time contact with the children continued, increased and became unsupervised.
22. Information the Council has provided indicates it started trying to identify a psychologist to carry out the assessment in March 2018. After further discussions within the Council about the reason for and purpose of the assessment, the Council decided to approach Dr K. It contacted him in mid-April. Dr K advised he would not be able to complete a report until August 2018. Nevertheless the Council asked if he could carry out the assessment. Then in early May 2018 it decided to approach another psychologist. Also Mrs X wanted a different psychologist to do the assessment who could take a fresh look. The Council spent almost the next five months identifying another professional to undertake the assessment and agreeing the funding. On 3 October 2018 the Council agreed funding for another psychologist, Dr P. During this time Council records show it took the view that:

“this case is not in court, therefore timescales are not too much of a barrier”.

23. Once the psychologist and funding had been agreed there were discussions about the need for Dr P to see previous relevant documents, some of which needed the permission of the courts to disclose. By 8 November 2018 the children’s social worker noted that the matter had “drifted” and was now “very urgent”. There were further communications over the next two months with the Council’s legal team, social care, and the professional association Dr P worked for. In January 2019 Mrs X refused to share the previous psychological assessment. The Council had to approach the courts which approved disclosure of the document in late January 2019. The Council says due to court delays it only received the document on 5 March 2019. Once the Council had all the necessary papers it provided them to Dr P. He carried out the assessment on 9 May 2019 and provided his report on 24 May 2019.
24. Dr P’s report took a different theoretical approach to Mrs X’s mental health history from the previous assessment. Dr P’s clear opinion was that the current situation, including the changes Mrs X had made in her life, allowed for the return of the children. His conclusion about Mrs X and Mr Y was that “overall they are well placed to meet the children’s needs”.
25. By this time social care staff involved with the children, including the Independent Reviewing Officer and the children’s social worker had come to view that, depending on the outcome of the psychological assessment, the two youngest children, C4 and C5, could return to Mrs X’s care.
26. Once the Council received Dr P’s report it reviewed the children’s placement in consultation with the key professionals working with the children. The Council’s view was that Mrs X had shown sustained change over the past few years and now, overall, the benefits of the family living together outweighed the risks. The Council noted that C4 and C5 had said they wished to return to live with their mother. The Council decided C4 and C5 could now live with Mrs X and Mr Y. Mrs X agreed that C3 should remain in foster care. The two younger children went to live with Mrs X and Mr Y in June 2019. The Council put in place a package of support for the family.

Stage 2 complaint

27. The Investigating Officer (IO) produced the report on the investigation in October 2018 after reviewing the documents and carrying out detailed interviews with Children’s Social Care staff involved in the case. In relation to the complaint about the quality of the parenting assessment, the IO found:
• Officer B had conducted 45 hours of interviews with Mrs X and Mr Y separately and together and had observed them during contact sessions with the children. She had a good background knowledge of the case as she had been involved in a previous parenting assessment in connection with the care proceedings.
• Officer B recognised the huge changes Mrs X had made since the previous assessment, including holding a responsible job.
• Mrs X had referred to medical evidence showing she had completed treatment and was no longer showing symptoms of personality disorder, but had not provided these to Officer B to be considered in the assessment.
• The IO had now seen the documents and confirmed they showed what Mrs X had told Officer B.
• Officer B considered that Mrs X’s improvement had occurred while she was not subject to the stresses of caring for her children. She was concerned there was not enough evidence to demonstrate that “her recovery was sufficiently robust to withstand the pressures of parenthood” and she would be able to sustain the change. She felt Mrs X and Mr Y did not show enough insight into the impact on the children of their past damaging experiences, or fully appreciate their exceptional needs.
28. The IO concluded that Officer B referred to Dr K’s reports in the parenting assessment because her experience of mental health issues led her to conclude that Mrs X’s diagnosis was still relevant. However the IO said this informed only part of the assessment. Officer B based most of her considerations on information from her extensive interviews with Mrs X and Mr Y and her observations of contact sessions with the children. She had also read all the case recordings, had discussions with social workers involved and attended meetings about the children.
29. Mrs X also complained about delay in arranging the psychological assessment, which she said had been agreed in February 2018. The IO found:
• Mrs X told the Council in January 2018 that she did not want Dr K to carry out the assessment but wanted someone with a fresh view of the case.
• It took time to identify an alternative consultant. It was important to find one who specialised in expert witness statements in case Mrs X decided to apply to court to discharge the Care Orders.
• Once the Council had identified a suitable consultant it had to commission and cost the work. The assessment was now due to begin in September 2018.
30. The IO concluded there was no evidence the Council acted with any lack of urgency and did not uphold the complaint.
31. When Mrs X complained to the Ombudsman in February 2019 the psychological assessment had still not yet taken place.

Analysis – was there fault causing injustice?

Parenting assessment

32. I have reviewed the parenting assessment completed in July 2017. I agree with the IO that the evidence does not show it was over-reliant on Dr K’s previous psychological assessment. Officer B came to her conclusions after many hours of interviews with Mrs X and Mr Y and observations of contact with the children, as well as reading the records and discussing the matter with professionals involved. In my view it was a detailed and balanced assessment taking into account not only Dr K’s report but Mrs X and Mr Y’s past histories, the complexities of Mrs X’s mental health history, the children’s needs and experiences, and Mrs X and Mr Y’s parenting skills and approaches. Officer B recommended a further psychological assessment, which in itself is evidence that she did not rely solely on Dr K’s assessment.
33. It is not for the Ombudsman to interfere with the professional judgment of the family assessment officer carrying out the assessment. But I could not conclude on the basis of the evidence I have seen that the way the assessment was conducted was flawed.

Delay in carrying out the psychological assessment

34. The later psychological report by Dr P, issued in May 2019, came to a different conclusion to Dr K’s report. Dr P took a different theoretical approach to the psychological issues involved and the previous diagnosis of personality disorder. He concluded that whatever the previous diagnosis, there was evidence of “significant sustained remission” and it was unlikely to cause problems in the future. Following this report the Council decided the benefits of re-uniting Mrs X with her children outweighed the risks.
35. The two psychological assessments took place nearly three and a half years apart and also represented different professional views. It is not for the Ombudsman to endorse one view over another. But I can consider whether there was any avoidable delay in carrying out the second assessment which prevented the Council reaching a positive conclusion sooner about returning the children to Mrs X.
36. The recommendation for a further psychological assessment was first made in July 2017, but the professionals meeting in August 2017 did not agree with the recommendation. The Council reviewed the matter in January 2018 in dealing with Mrs X’s complaint and recommended an assessment then. The assessment did not take place until May 2019.
37. The Council has accepted there was delay in arranging the psychological assessment. But it says there were several reasons for this. It refers to difficulty in commissioning a service, initial confusion about the status of the case, a change of social worker, and the logistics of having two different social work teams. Also it says Mrs X was reluctant to give permission to share the previous psychological assessment. This meant the Council had to seek the consent of the court and all the legal firms involved, some of which had closed or merged, to allow disclosure of previous court papers. There was then a delay by the court in releasing the documents.
38. Some of these delays were not of the Council’s making. From January to March 2019 the Council was involved in trying to obtain the permission of the court and then it took Dr P two months to issue the report having received the commission.
39. However the Council has not explained why it did not begin the process of trying to identify an appropriate psychologist to carry out the assessment until March 2018. This is two months after the recommendation to undertake an assessment.
40. I accept there were some difficulties, as the Council has outlined, in making the arrangements. However in my view there were steps the Council could reasonably have taken to speed up the process, as well as starting it earlier. It could have drawn up a potential list at the outset. It could have approached a second practitioner as soon as it was aware Dr K would not be available until August 2018. In my view there was a lack of urgency in the Council’s approach. This is evidenced in the case recordings with the comments that timescales were “not too much of a barrier” because the matter was not part of legal proceedings. Given the importance to Mrs X of being reunited with her children as soon as possible, I consider this approach amounts to fault on the part of the Council.
41. If the Council had started the process of commissioning the assessment promptly in January 2018, and allowing for the following steps:
• one month to obtain Mrs X’s view that she wished to have a different psychologist carry out the assessment;
• two months to identify a suitable alternative psychologist and commission the assessment;
• the three months it took to deal with the matter of obtaining the court’s permission;
• the two months it took for Dr P to produce the report once provided with the documents released by the court;

I take the view that the Council could reasonably have obtained the report on the new psychological assessment by September 2018.

42. I do not think it is possible to say what the outcome of the assessment would have been if it had been completed so much earlier. The passage of time may have influenced the outcome. Nor can I say whether even if it had been positive this would necessarily have resulted in a decision to re-unite the family at that point. I say this because the time lag gave the opportunity for the Council to be satisfied that Mrs X’s state of mental health had improved and stabilised sufficiently for her to have the children back. It also allowed for Mrs X and Mr Y to spend more time with the children through the increased contact. This would have provided more evidence to convince the Council of their capacity to care for the children.
43. Nevertheless I draw two conclusions about the impact of the delay. First there is evidence that by at least mid-February 2019 at a professionals meeting the Council was considering returning the children to their mother, pending the outcome of the assessment. If it had been completed by then, in my view the children would have returned at least three months earlier. Second, Mrs X experienced worry and frustration at the delay in arranging the assessment. She also has the anxiety and uncertainty of not knowing whether she would have got the children back earlier if the assessment had been carried out in a timely way. This represents an injustice to Mrs X.

Agreed action

44. To remedy the injustice caused the Council has agreed that within one month of the decision on this complaint the Council should take the following action:
• write to Mrs X to apologise for the delay in arranging the psychological assessment
• pay her £750 to recognise the distress caused by the impact of the delay
• pay her £250 to recognise her time and trouble in pursuing her complaint.

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Final decision

45. I have found that the Council was at fault in delaying arranging the recommended assessment which delayed the return of the children. I am satisfied with the action the Council has agreed to take to remedy the injustice caused and so I have completed my investigation.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

46. I did not investigate the part of the complaint about failure to obtain the children’s views about where they wished to live. There is evidence that towards the end of the period the children were expressing the view that they wanted to live with their mother. If I were to investigate and find that the Council had not taken adequate steps to establish their wishes earlier I would not know what views they would have expressed if they had been asked. I would not be able to investigate that issue fully without speaking to the children, which I do not consider appropriate.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman