Birmingham City Council (19 017 934)
Category : Children's care services > Child protection
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 25 Mar 2020
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: The Ombudsman should not investigate this complaint about the Council’s involvement in protecting Ms J and her family from harm over the past 20 years, because most of the events happened too long ago to allow a fair and robust investigation.
The complaint
- Ms J complains about the Council’s involvement in protecting her and her family from harm over the past 20 years.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
- The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint unless we are satisfied the council knows about the complaint and has had an opportunity to investigate and reply. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to notify the council of the complaint and give it an opportunity to investigate and reply. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(5))
How I considered this complaint
- I have considered the information Ms J provided with her complaint, and information provided by the Council when we asked whether it knew about the complaint. I have given Ms J the opportunity to comment on my draft decision.
What I found
- Ms J was taken into care nearly 20 years ago. Her complaint to us includes the circumstances in which she came into care, the support the Council provided when she left care, its failure to help when she experienced domestic abuse as an adult, and the taking of her own children into care. These are all historic issues which happened too long ago to allow fair and robust investigation now.
- Ms J also refers to work the Council is currently doing with her family. She believes the Council could have done more, sooner, to help them. This is a complaint she needs to make to the Council, before we can consider it.
Final decision
- The Ombudsman cannot investigate this complaint. This is because most of the events complained about happened too long ago to allow a fair and robust investigation, and the Council has not yet had an adequate opportunity to respond to Ms J’s complaint about more recent events.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman