Summary: Mrs X complains of inadequate support from the Council after she left her husband due to domestic abuse. She says the Council has wrongly refused to consider her complaint under Stage 3 of the statutory children’s complaints procedure. The Council is at fault and has remedied this by offering Mrs X a Stage 3 review.

The complaint

1. The Council has upheld various complaints from the complainant, who I refer to here as Mrs X, about the support it provided to Mrs X and the actions of its staff. Mrs X says those complaints that were not upheld or only partially upheld were incorrectly decided. She complains the Council is wrongly refusing to consider these at Stage 3 of the statutory complaints process set out in the Children Act 1989. She also complains that further mistakes have been made by the Council in its complaints handling since it upheld the original complaints.

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What I have investigated

2. I have investigated the Council’s complaints handling, including its refusal to investigate Mrs X’s complaints at Stage 3 of the complaints process.

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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. We cannot investigate complaints about what happens in schools. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5, paragraph 5(b), as amended)
5. 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)
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)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I spoke to Mrs X and considered information provided by Mrs X and the Council. I provided Mrs X and the Council with my draft decision and considered their comments before finalising my 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 complaints process

9. Under the Children Act 1989 and the Representations Procedure (England) Regulations 2006 councils must follow a statutory process for handling certain complaints about children’s care services.
10. There are three stages to the statutory complaints procedure which each have set timescales. The first stage allows an informal resolution of the complaint. If that is not possible, the complainant is entitled to an independent investigation of the complaint. At the final stage an independent complaints review panel can consider the complaint.
11. At each stage the complainant has the right to ask for the complaint to be considered at the next stage of the procedure.
12. Getting the Best from Complaints provides detailed guidance on how councils should conduct investigations into complaints

What happened

13. Mr and Mrs X separated after a marriage which Mrs X describes as abusive. The couple’s two children have lived with Mrs X since. Mrs X obtained a Non-Molestation Order against Mr X. Mr X later undertook in family proceedings to abide by the terms of the Order and findings of domestic abuse were made against him by the family courts. After Mr X applied for contact with his children the court asked the Council to produce child protection reports on the situation.
14. Mrs X later made a series of complaints about the Council’s actions in respect of Mr X and her children in the context of contact with Mr X. The Council investigated these complaints at Stage 1 and 2 of the statutory process. It upheld some complaints, for which it recommended an apology be made, and partially upheld or did not uphold others. Amongst those upheld was a complaint about delays and unclear information in respect of the complaints process itself.
15. In July 2019 the Council manager who had adjudicated on the complaints at Stage 2 sent Mrs X her findings. The adjudicator advised that if Mrs X wished to have her complaint considered at Stage 3, she should make a request within 20 days. The letter also offered Mrs X a face-to-face meeting, to which Mrs X agreed.
16. In late August, shortly before the meeting, Mrs X sent the adjudicator a detailed email setting out her disagreement with the Stage 2 findings and “ongoing errors” being made by her children’s school.
17. The meeting between Mrs X and the adjudicator went ahead. The Council has said it has no notes or minutes of this meeting, which was not attended by anyone from its complaints team. The Council has apologised to Mrs X for this.
18. The day after the meeting Mrs X sent the adjudicator a condensed version of her previous email. The adjudicator’s response referred to actions by the school and attached a copy of a court order justifying the school’s response. Mrs X pointed out that this was not the order that was in place at the time of the school’s action, as well as disagreeing with other parts of the response.
19. In November 2019 Mrs X emailed the complaints team to say she wished to proceed with the Stage 3 review. A week later the Council acknowledged Mrs X’s request to move to Stage 3. A week after that the Council sent further information about the Stage 3 review process. It also offered a meeting with a senior manager and added: “Should you wish to move to Stage 3 of the statutory process I will trigger the Stage 3 immediately”.
20. Mrs X brought her complaint to us. In April 2020 we advised her to complete the Council’s complaint process. Mrs X asked the Council to proceed with the Stage 3 review the following month. The Council refused to proceed with the Stage 3 review, quoting the statutory complaints process which requires that a request for a Stage 3 review be made within 20 days of receipt of the Stage 2 response.
21. Mrs X told me she did not reply to the Council’s November 2019 email as she had contacted us via her MP on the Council’s advice.
22. I spoke to the Council. It told me it had agreed with Mrs X that a Stage 3 review would go ahead.

Analysis

23. The Council decided not to proceed with the Stage 3 review on the basis that Mrs X had failed to reply to a single email in the context of protracted correspondence. Its decision followed a meeting between a senior manager and Mrs X for which no records exist.
24. Given Mrs X had previously made clear that she wished to proceed to Stage 3 and had previously become justifiably confused by the complaints process, the Council was at fault in not following up the email with Mrs X.
25. The Council has remedied this fault by agreeing to hold a Stage 3 review. It has arranged a review panel meeting for December. It told me it will consider Mrs X’s complaints about the adjudicator’s comments within that review.

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Final decision

26. I have completed my investigation with a finding of fault by the Council, which it has remedied.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

27. I did not investigate Mrs X’s complaints about the impact of the Council’s faults on staff at her children’s school as these are outside of our jurisdiction.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman