Summary: Miss B complains the Council failed to implement a child protection plan put in place when her son, who is now 15, was a baby. She considers the Council has not provided adequate support to her. She further complains about the way the Council has considered her complaints and the remedy provided. She says it has had an adverse impact on her and her son’s mental health and she has suffered financially by not receiving the benefits to which they were entitled. There was fault which caused injustice to Miss B. The Council has apologised to Miss B but it will now make a payment to her.

The complaint

1. I will call the complainant Miss B. She complains the Council failed to implement a child protection plan put in place when her son, who is now 15, was a baby. She considers the Council has not provided adequate support to her. She further complains about the way the Council has considered her complaints and the remedy provided. She says it has had an adverse impact on her and her son’s mental health and she has suffered financially by not receiving the benefits to which they were entitled.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:

• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone want.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

4. 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. 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

6. I considered the complaint and documents provided by Miss B and spoke to her. I asked the Council to comment on the complaint and provide information. I asked the Council to comment on the complaint and provide information. I sent a draft of this statement to Miss B and the Council and considered their comments.
7. 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

8. 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.
9. In October 2017 Miss B complained to the Council. Her complaint referred to the support she received when her son, who I will call X, was a baby and there had been a non-accidental injury to him by the father. She considered that if the Council had provided the support it should a further injury by the father would have been avoided. Following the second injury X was taken into care. He eventually returned to live with Miss B and there has been extensive, although intermittent, involvement from social care with Miss B and X ever since. Miss B also complained about that. She said the Council had repeatedly stopped its involvement when they were still in need of support and there had been multiple changes of social workers. All that had meant she and X had not had the support they needed.
10. The Council considered the complaint at stage one of the children’s complaint procedure. That concluded in November. Miss B was not happy and requested that the complaint go to the next stage. An investigating officer and independent person were appointed. The report upheld or partially upheld five of the complaints. Miss B was not satisfied and approached us. We referred her back to the Council as the next stage in the process was a stage 3 review panel hearing. Over the summer of 2018 the Council tried to arrange a date with Miss B for a panel hearing. That was unsuccessful and following a conversation between the complains team and Miss B the Council decided it should not proceed to stage 3 as it could not provide the outcomes Miss B wanted.
11. Miss B renewed her complaint with us. The Council then agreed to carry out a stage 3 hearing and to pay Miss B £100 for not arranging it before.
12. The hearing took place in early March 2019. The panel generally accepted the investigation report and findings but for two of the complaints went further. It changed a partially upheld to fully upheld and a not upheld finding to a partially upheld. An officer of the Council wrote to Miss B later in March giving the Council’s response to the review panel findings. He said the findings were accepted and apologised to Miss B. He also offered a payment of £300 for the avoidable distress caused by the Council’s handling of the complaint.
13. A year later in March 2020 Miss B complained to us again as she did not consider there was a satisfactory outcome or resolution of her complaint.

Analysis

14. There is a statutory procedure for the investigation of complaints about children’s social care which has been followed here – albeit with some intervention from us. If a council has investigated something under this procedure, we would not normally re-investigate it unless we consider the investigation was flawed. However, we may look at whether a council properly considered the findings and recommendations of the independent investigation.
15. Here the complaint procedure looked back to events that happened when X was a baby, 13 years earlier. We would not normally investigate historic matters because of the difficulties in reaching sound findings on matters that happened so long ago. But the investigating officer, the independent person and the review panel were satisfied that they could reach some conclusions and I accept that position.

Complaint 1

16. The first complaint, upheld both at stage 2 and by the review panel, was that there was evidence the support which the initial child protection case conference had determined should be put in place was not. And that Miss B did not receive any support through social services to make sure she accessed services which may have helped her. Further, that neither Miss B or the father of X received help to improve their parenting skills. Had they done it may have avoided further injury to X which resulted in him being taken into care.
17. In responding to Miss B the Council apologised but it has not provided any other remedy to her for these failings. I do not consider it is possible to reach any sound conclusion about what would have happened had better support been in place. But I consider Miss B is left with the understandable view that things may well have been different and that she and X would have had a better start in life. I therefore consider the Council should make a payment to her to recognise this injustice.

Complaint 2

18. This complaint concerns social care involvement with Miss B over the time X returned to live with her. Here the stage 2 investigation partially upheld the complaint but the review panel went further and fully upheld it.
19. The findings were that there was a pattern of the Council stopping social care intervention but then restarting its involvement when there was a further referral. The review panel noted the Council had accepted in its response to the stage 2 investigation that the changes of social worker would have had a detrimental impact on Miss B and X. And it did not consider there was evidence that Miss B had unrealistic expectations of what support could be provided.
20. The Council has apologised for this but has not provided any other remedy. Again I consider it is impossible to draw any solid conclusions on what should have happened. The complaint investigation took an overview looking at that pattern of social care involvement with Miss B but it did not get into the detail. Given the time period and how long ago some of these events happened I do not consider that it could have done more. Therefore any remedy has to be limited to the justifiable sense of grievance Miss B feels that she and X have probably not had the level of service they should.

Complaint 3

21. Complaint 3 was about the possibility of a referral for respite. Neither the stage 2 investigation nor the review panel upheld this complaint. Clear reasons were provided for the decision reached. I do not consider there was any fault in how this decision was made.

Complaint 4

22. There was agreement between the stage 2 investigation and the review panel which both upheld this complaint about failings in the stage 2 investigation. The Council has apologised and said it is reviewing how it handles stage one investigations. It also offered Miss B £300 for the failures in the complaint handling. I consider that is a fair response.

Complaint 5

23. This point was introduced as part of the stage two investigation as Miss B said that since she had made the complaint the support she received had worsened. The stage 2 investigation did not uphold the complaint but the reivew panel did. It concluded that the stage 2 did not have grounds for the position that Miss B had unrealistic expectations. But it went on that it was not possible to say whether the support had worsened. It referred to a possible outstanding payment for a replacement carpet.
24. I consider these conclusions were sound based on the investigation report written in March 2018. The investigating officer provided a detailed description of recent contact between Miss B and social care which formed the basis for her conclusion. By the time the review panel came to consider this point it was a year later. Miss B had met with an officer in May 2018 to discuss the stage two. In the notes of that meeting I consider it is clear Miss B was raising ongoing concerns about the support and involvement of children’s social care. This was not picked up as a new matter but left as part of this complaint. That meant that by the time the review panel was held in March 2019 there was no factual information about what had happened over the last year. I consider Miss B’s ongoing complaint and concerns have been overlooked because it was not separated from this wider complaint about the historic matters.
25. I cannot come to any view on whether there is any fault in the recent events as there has been no investigation by the Council and I have no information about it. What now needs to happen is that, if Miss B wishes, the Council should take a complaint from her about any concerns she may have about social care’s involvement since March 2018.
26. I consider the payment of £300 gives a suitable remedy for the failure to capture this complaint. If any investigation found fault in that period then there would need to be fresh consideration of any remedy. Miss B would be able to come back to the Ombudsman if she was not happy with the outcome.

Other matters

27. Miss B referred to not receiving all the benefits to which she was entitled and issues about losing a job. I have not referred to these matters as they did not form the basis of the complaint that was formally investigated and the Council has provided satisfactory responses to them.

Agreed action

28. The Council will, within a month of the final decision, pay Miss B £1000 to remedy the injustice I refer to in paragraphs 17 and 20 above. This is in addition to the £300 which has been offered for the injustice from the faults in the complaint handling.

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Final decision

29. There was fault by the Council which caused injustice to Miss B. The Council has apologised to Miss B but it will now make a payment to her.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman