Summary: Miss X complains about the way the Council handled a safeguarding referral about her children. The Council was at fault for needlessly humiliating Miss X at a Child Protection Conference and for its handling of her request for a stage three panel. The Council should apologise, pay Miss X £300, and take action to improve its service.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains about the way the Council handled a safeguarding referral about the safety of her children. She says the Council lied and exaggerated about the danger her children were in and threatened to take her children away from her. She says she feels the family has been discriminated against based on race.
2. Miss X says she did nothing wrong and, had the Council acted properly, the children would not have been subject to child protection plans, she would not have lost a school placement and, eventually, her job, and the family would not have suffered distress and financial hardship.

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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 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)
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. I spoke to Miss X about the complaint.
6. I wrote to the Council with my enquiries and considered its response along with relevant law and guidance.
7. Miss X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.
8. Under our information sharing agreement, we will share this decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted).

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What I found

Statutory procedure for complaints about children’s services

9. 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 Investigating Officer 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.

Background

10. In December 2017, Miss X called the police to her home. She said her ex-partner had assaulted one of their children. She and the child made statements to the police to this effect. The police alerted the Council.
11. In the following weeks, Miss X retracted her police statement against her ex-partner. She says she did not want her child to have to testify in court. The Council was concerned that Miss X was allowing the children to have contact with her ex-partner and that her actions suggested she might not be able to protect her children from harm.
12. In January 2018, the Council held a strategy meeting and agreed to call an Initial Child Protection Conference (ICPC) to decide if Miss X’s children needed Child Protection Plans to keep them safe.
13. The ICPC took place in February 2018 and the conference agreed to make all three of Miss X’s children the subjects of Child Protection Plans because they were at risk of physical harm.
14. Miss X complained to the Council in February 2018 about its handling of her case. The Council considered her complaint under the statutory procedure for complaints about children’s services. It issued a stage one response in June 2018 and Miss X asked the Council to escalate her complaint to stage two in July 2018.
15. The stage two investigation found:
• The Council should have told Miss X in writing, not in a phone call, that her ex-partner was not to have any contact with the children;
• The social worker’s report to the ICPC contained inaccurate information about Miss X.
• At the ICPC, there was an inappropriate and humiliating intrusion into Miss X’s private life.
• Despite having agreed to remove the inaccurate information, the social worker’s report was presented to the child protection review in April 2018 unchanged.
• While Miss X’s children were the subjects of Child Protection Plans, the Council did not visit them as often as it should have.
• The Council mismanaged arranging contact between Miss X’s children and their father by providing conflicting information, causing confusion and distress.
• Although the Council’s stage one complaint response upheld some of Miss X’s complaints, it did not say what this meant or what actions it would be take.
16. The IO made the following recommendations to the Council:
• apologise to Miss X;
• hold a learning event to review issues arising from the case;
• avoid using broad, unqualified statements in its documentation;
• review the inclusion of tick boxes in templates for social worker reports;
• confirm in writing any expectations about children’s contact with another person; and
• ensure complaint responses clarify the basis to uphold or not uphold complaints.
17. The Council accepted the recommendations in its adjudication letter to Miss X in December 2018.
18. In March 2019, Miss X asked the Council to consider her complaint at stage three of the statutory procedure for complaints about children’s services.
19. The Council arranged a stage three panel for June 2019. Miss X asked the Council to rearrange the panel at the last minute.
20. At first, the Council told Miss X:

“if we do not receive any further request from you to re-arrange the Stage 3 Panel within the next 90 days (14 October 2019), I will consider this case closed.”

21. Miss X contacted the Council within 90 days seeking clarification. She asked if she needed to request a new panel within 90 days or if a new panel needed to be held within 90 days. The council said a new panel would need to be held within 90 days. Miss X disputed that this was the meaning of the Council’s original communication.
22. At this point, the Council said it would not arrange a new panel because it was now well outside the statutory timeframe for holding a stage three panel. It referred to a previous decision by the Ombudsman in which we were critical of the council for delays in the statutory complaints procedure:

“the original Stage 3 request was handled properly. There was limited notice given by yourself that you were not going to attend. The Local Authority in trying to be helpful extended this timescale in order for you to facilitate a Subject Access Request. The Ombudsman has chastised us for in a similar case for not arranging Panel with the timescale stating that the statutory regulations are quite clear and therefore I have had to bring this offer to an end.” 

Was there fault causing injustice?

The Complaints Process

23. If a council has investigated something under the statutory complaints procedure, the Ombudsman would not normally re-investigate it unless we consider that investigation was flawed. However, we may look at whether a council properly considered the findings and recommendations of the independent investigation.
24. In response to our enquiries, the Council has demonstrated it has acted on the recommendations made following the stage two investigation to improve its services. The Council held a learning event at the Investigating Officer’s recommendation. The Council should tell the Ombudsman about any specific learning or changes to practice it identified at this meeting.
25. The Council’s response to Miss X’s complaint at stage one did not explain what action the Council would take or the basis on which the complaints were upheld or not upheld. The Council’s action following the recommendation by the Investigating Officer was to include a point about complaints in a memo to managers. However, this did not provide enough detail about what should be included in a stage one complaint response. The Council should provide specific guidance to managers on this subject.
26. The original stage three panel date was already outside statutory timescales. The statutory guidance says the Council has 30 days from the request for a stage three to organise the panel. Miss X requested the stage three in March 2019. Therefore, the Council should have arranged the panel by April. Instead, the panel was scheduled for June.
27. The Council says this delay was to accommodate school holidays and Miss X’s childcare obligations, as well as staff availability. Miss X advised at very short notice that she did not want the panel to proceed. In effect, she withdrew her request for a stage three panel.
28. It was open to the Council to refuse to hold a further panel on the basis that the timeframe in which to request one had lapsed. However, the Council told Miss X that it would arrange a new panel if she requested one within 90 days. This is not fault.
29. According to the statutory guidance, the 30-day timeframe to arrange a panel starts when the complainant makes the request. Therefore, the Council gave
    Miss X 90 days in which to request a new panel and the Council would have 30 days from the date of that request to arrange one.
30. The Ombudsman is critical of delay in the statutory complaints procedure when it causes an injustice to the complainant. Every case is considered on its own merits. In Miss X’s case, it is unlikely the Ombudsman would have found fault with the Council for being flexible and accommodating Miss X’s wishes for a delayed stage three.
31. It is fault for the Council to agree a timeframe for Miss X to request a new stage three panel and then revoke this offer before the agreed time has elapsed. This caused Miss X frustration and avoidable distress.

Child Protection Investigation

32. During the ICPC, the Council inappropriately asked Miss X about something personal in her medical records. This was humiliating for Miss X and caused her unnecessary additional distress at an already difficult time. I do not consider an apology a sufficient remedy for this injustice. The Council should pay Miss X £200 in acknowledgment of the injustice caused by its fault.
33. The stage two investigation found the Council’s records still contained the errors the Council told Miss X it would amend. Specifically, the part of the social worker’s report about Miss X’s mental health and reference to ‘neglect’. The Council should amend these records to remove the inaccuracies or otherwise record that the information is wrong.

Race Discrimination

34. Miss X says the Council treated her family differently because of their race.
    Miss X is white, her ex-partner is Black. Miss X felt the Council assumed that because he is Black, her ex-partner must have a history of violence. She says this meant it would not give proper weight to her own assertions that the violent incident in December 2017 was out of character for him. Miss X says that were it not for this bias, her children would not have been the subjects of Child Protection Plans.
35. There is no particular incident or comment Miss X identifies as evidence of racial bias. Rather, her perception was that Officers’ unconscious biases and assumptions affected the way the Council assessed the risk to her children.
    Miss X says since becoming a parent of mixed-race children, she has come to know when her family is being treated differently because of their race.
36. There is no evidence of racial bias in how the Council decided to make the children subjects of Child Protections Plans at the ICPC. It relied on Miss X’s first statement to the police that the incident in December 2017 was part of a pattern of abuse and further information provided by the police as well as the social worker’s assessment in deciding there was a risk to the children.
37. Nevertheless, Miss X says her perception that the Council treated her family differently because of their race was heightened because every person at the ICPC was white. As a result, she felt the Council could not properly understand the views and experiences of her mixed-race children.
38. By their nature, child protection investigations are distressing and intrusive for everyone. However, the Council’s Public Sector Equality Duty requires that this not be more difficult for people with protected characteristics such as race or disability than it is for any other member of the public.
39. There is no fault in how the Council called the ICPC. However, the Council may wish to reflect on Miss X’s experience and consider if there is learning it can use to improve its services to Black and Minority Ethnic people in its area.

Agreed action

40. Following my recommendations the Council has agreed to take the following action to remedy the injustice caused to Miss X:
• Apologise to Miss X in writing;
• Amend the Council’s records to remove or highlight the errors identified by the Investigating Officer;
• Pay Miss X £200 in recognition of the needless humiliation she felt at the ICPC; and
• Pay Miss X £100 for the frustration and confusion she experienced because of the Council’s handling of her stage three panel request.
41. The Council should take this action within four weeks of my final decision.
42. To improve its services, the Council should:
• Provide evidence to the Ombudsman of specific learning or changes to practice resulting from the learning event recommended by the stage two investigation;
• Remind relevant staff that a stage 1 complaint response should include:
1. what it upholds or does not uphold
2. the basis for that decision
3. what the remedy will be for any upheld complaints
43. The Council should take this action within 12 weeks of my final decision.

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Final decision

44. There was fault by the Council. The action I have recommended is a suitable remedy for the injustice it caused.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman