East Riding of Yorkshire Council (20 000 544)

Category : Children's care services > Child protection

Decision : Upheld

Decision date : 22 Dec 2021

The Ombudsman's final decision:

Summary: Mr C says the Council was at fault for the way in which it investigated safeguarding concerns involving his wife’s children. He says the Council caused him and his family injustice in the form of distress by being inconsiderate and intrusive. Mr C complained using the statutory complaints procedure which involves an independent investigation and review panel. This process found the Council to be at fault for numerous failures in the investigation. The Council’s complaints procedure was too slow but the Ombudsman considers the findings of that process to be fair. We have recommended a remedy for the injustice caused.

The complaint

  1. The complainant, who I have called Mr C, says the Council was at fault for the way in which it investigated concerns about abuse of his wife’s children. In particular, he says, the Council was at fault for:
      1. Poor communication,
      2. The actions of a social worker the Council employed. I have called this officer Officer O. Mr C says Officer O:
        1. Planned contacts and communicated with the family poorly,
        2. Failed to explain the Council’s position adequately to the family
        3. On one occasion, insensitively delayed the family from going out on a Christmas outing by continuing to ask questions.
        4. On one occasion organized a meeting which was to involve Mrs C and her former partner who had been abusive towards her, and
        5. Failed to hold regular core group meetings after the initial case conference.
      3. Failure to provide support and assistance for the children, A and B.
  2. Mr C says Council fault caused him and Mrs C injustice because the investigation they went through was heavy-handed and intrusive

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

  1. 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. If a council has investigated something under this procedure, the Ombudsman would not normally re-investigate it unless he considers that investigation was flawed. However, he may look at whether a council properly considered the findings and recommendations of the independent investigation.
  2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. 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)
  3. 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)
  4. 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.

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

  1. I spoke to Mr C. I wrote an enquiry letter to the Council requesting further information. I considered all the information I had gathered and wrote a draft decision.
  2. Mr C and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

Back to top

What I found

What should happen

Safeguarding: legislation 

  1. The Children Act 1989 (‘the Act’) and the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance, sets out councils’ responsibilities to safeguard children.
  2. If a council accepts a referral for a child, it must carry out a needs assessment. Every assessment should reflect the unique characteristics and needs of the individual child.
  3. Where a child’s need is relatively low level, individual services and universal services may be able to take swift action. Where there are more complex needs, the Council may offer a service under section 17 (child in need) or section 47 (child protection) of the Children Act 1989.

Children in need s.17 of the Act

  1. A child in need is defined in the Act as a child who is unlikely to achieve or maintain a reasonable level of health or development or whose health and development is likely to be significantly or further impaired without the provision of services.

Councils’ duty to investigate, s.47

  1. S.47 of the Act says that, when there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that a child is suffering or is at risk of suffering ‘significant’ harm, the local council must investigate. They must make ‘such enquiries as they consider necessary to enable them to decide whether should take any action’ to protect the child.
  2. When carrying out s.47 enquiries, social workers should do so in a way which minimises distress for the child and family. If they decide there is a risk of significant harm to the child(ren) they should organise an initial child protection conference (ICPC).
  3. After the ICPC, if the child is made subject to a child protection plan, the relevant council must establish a ‘core group’ which should meet within 10 days. It should then meet regularly to assess progress. A ‘child protection review conference’ should be held to review progress within three months of the ICPC.
  4. If there are still concerns about significant harm, the child protection plan will continue. There must be a further review within six months.
  5. If and when a council decides a child is no longer at risk of significant harm (or the child becomes an adult or the family moves permanently to another council area), the council should discontinue the child protection plan.

Local Authority Designated Officer

  1. Working Together with Children says that councils should appoint an officer; a local authority designated officer (known as a LADO) who should deal with allegations involving children made against those who work with children.

The statutory complaints procedure for children’s complaints

  1. The Children Act 1989 established the requirement for local authorities to have a formal representations/complaints procedure to deal primarily with complaints by and on behalf of children and young people.
  2. This procedure is set out in the 2006 guidance Getting the Best from Complaints.
  3. The process has a three-stage structure. At stage one, a council responds to a complaint. If a complainant is not satisfied, they can ask for a stage two investigation. Stage two investigations are overseen by an independent person.
  4. If complainants are still not satisfied, they can request a stage three review. This is conducted by a panel which takes evidence from witnesses.
  5. Not all complaints about children’s services must go through the statutory complaints procedure. Children’s services complaints and complaints brought by parents concerning their own rights rather than those of their children, can use the Council’s normal corporate complaints procedure. However, once a council has opted to use the statutory complaints procedure, even if it does not have to, it should complete the process.
  6. When a case has been considered via the statutory complaints procedure, we generally do not reinvestigate the substantive issues. The statutory procedure is designed to provide significant independence and detailed analysis of concerns raised. This means further reinvestigation by the Ombudsman is not necessary unless there are serious and fundamental flaws in the way the case was investigated.

Statutory process time limits

  1. Statutory investigations must be carried out according to the following timetable:
    • 10 days at sage 1 (or 20 for complex complaints)
    • 25 days at stage 2 (with a maximum extension to 65 days)
    • 20 days for the complainant to request a review panel.
    • 30 days to convene and hold the review
    • 5 days for the panel to issue its findings and #
    • 15 days for the council to respond to the findings.

What happened

  1. Mr C lives with his wife, Mrs C, and her two children, A and B. In mid-2019, A was in her mid-teens. B was nine. The Council’s Youth and Family Services department made a Children’s Act referral to the safeguarding team because of various concerns including the fact that B had been violent towards her.
  2. The Council allocated a social worker to carry out a s.17 Child in Need assessment. The social worker assessed risk to both A and B.
  3. This assessment was completed in July 2019. It identified potential risks to both A and B. It said A was at risk of violence from B and Mrs C. It also suggested that Mr and Mrs C might be fabricating evidence that B suffered from an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
  4. The report recommended that a child in need plan be formulated. Mr and Mrs C agreed. The plan included arrangements for 4-weekly visits to A and B and an assessment of B’s medical condition. A Council social worker, Officer O, was appointed to the case in October 2019.
  5. Mr C contacted the Council’s special educational needs and disability team in late November 2019 to ask for specialist support with B’s behaviour. The team agreed to gather information.
  6. The records show that this period was a stressful one for Mr and Mrs C. They believed that B had an ASD. They also had challenges with A who they said was arguing with Mrs C and had become involved with the police.
  7. Officer O made his first visit to the family a few days later in mid-December 2019. He gathered information from the children’s schools. He believed there were reasons for concern. He held a strategy meeting with his manager and planned to progress towards an initial child protection conference (ICPC).
  8. Mr and Mrs C had a meeting with the special educational needs team. Officer O then visited the family at home, unannounced, shortly before Christmas and informed them that he was planning an ICPC.
  9. The ICPC was held in mid-January 2020. A and B were made subject to child protection plans with Mr and Mrs C’s agreement. In early February 2020, Officer O told Mr C that the Council would refer him to a LADO because he worked with children and young adults. Mr C was understandably distressed.
  10. Mr and Mrs C’s relationship with Officer O deteriorated. The COVID-19 crisis also worsened during this time and Mr C decided that he would no longer allow Officer O to make home visits. Meetings were held online. The Council decided in April 2020 that the child protection plan should remain in place.
  11. After this, the records show, the family’s situation improved. However, Mr and Mrs C’s relationship with Officer O did not improve. Meetings continued to take place online. In July 2020, Mr C told the Council that the family’s relationship with Officer O had broken down and asked for him to be replaced.
  12. The dispute resolution team began to meet with Mr and Mrs C and advised that the parents felt that the Council had not been sufficiently clear about why the child protection plan was in place. In late July 2020, Mr and Mrs C said again that they would prefer not to work with Officer O anymore.
  13. Not long afterwards, Mr C complained to the Council. He said the child protection plan went beyond what was necessary and said Officer O had been unprofessional and had upset the family on several occasions.
  14. The Council investigated Mr C’s complaint under the statutory complaints procedure. Dissatisfied with the stage one response, Mr C requested a stage two investigation. He said he understood why some intervention had been necessary but said that the child protection plan was never needed. He also said:
      1. Officer O had been ‘insensitive and unhelpful’,
      2. Officer O had failed to plan or communicate effectively,
      3. Officer O did not fully explain information to Mr and Mrs C,
      4. On one occasion, (when he came to the family home to tell them of the impending ICPC in December 2019) Officer O arrived at the family home unannounced and, without asking if they were busy, told them that the Council intended to convene an ICPC. This was distressing and insensitive.
      5. Officer O arranged for Mrs C’s former partner, A and B’s father, to visit the ICPC. He had been violent to Mrs C in the past and, although he did not come, this was alarming and upsetting to Mrs C.
      6. Officer O failed to organise regular child protection case conferences as he should have done.
      7. The Council failed to provide any adequate support to the family or to help them with B’s sensory processing disorder.
  15. Mr C said that his desired outcomes were:
      1. A new social worker to be assigned to the case,
      2. A letter of support to help them have B assessed for autism,
      3. Support with B’s behaviour at home,
      4. Reassurance that, should A’s needs increase, the Council would assist.
  16. Officer O remained in his role until early December 2020 during which time the relationship between them did not improve.
  17. Also in December, B was diagnosed with a condition frequently linked to autism.
  18. The stage two investigation was completed in January 2021. Its findings were:
      1. Officer O unhelpful: Upheld in part. Although Officer O’s questions to the family may have seemed insensitive, it was his job to seek out information. While this would have been distressing, he had to do it. However, on one occasion, he used humour inappropriately.
      2. Failure to plan or communicate: Upheld in part. Meetings had been cancelled and changed at very short notice.
      3. Failure to communicate adequate information: Not upheld. Officer O could not tell the family everything they wanted to know. When, for example, they asked about medical matters, he could not tell them.
      4. Visit before Christmas to talk about ICPC: Upheld in part. Officer O should not have visited the family so soon before Christmas but, having done so, he could not have made the meeting any shorter than he did.
      5. Arranging for A and B’s father to attend ICPC: Upheld. Officer O was right to say the children’s father should be invited to the ICPC but should have taken steps to allay Mrs C’s understandable anxiety about his attendance.
      6. Failure to organise regular case conference: Upheld. Although COVID-19 contributed to the failure to hold conferences, they should have been held.
      7. Lack of support with B’s condition: Not upheld.
  19. As to the recommendations, by the time the report was issued, Officer O had already been removed from the case and B already had a diagnosis of sensory processing disorder.
  20. The Council accepted the report’s findings of fault. In an adjudication letter sent to Mr C in January 2021, it apologised and said it would change its systems to make it easier to register concern with social workers.
  21. Mr C escalated his complaint to Stage three of the statutory complaints procedure. A review panel met in late March 2021.
  22. The Stage three panel found as follows:
      1. Officer O unhelpful: Upheld.
      2. Failure to plan or communicate: Upheld. The panel considered that it was the Council, and not just Officer O, who had communicated poorly and had not planned adequately or held meetings.
      3. Failure to communicate information: Upheld. The Council had failed to provide a ‘comprehensive provision of service’.
      4. Visit before Christmas to talk about ICPC: Upheld. The meeting did not have to happen that day and should not have done so. It was poor planning.
      5. Arranging for A and B’s father to attend ICPC: Upheld. Officer O was right to say he should be invited but should have taken steps to allay Mrs C’s understandable anxiety.
      6. Failure to organise regular case conferences: Upheld. Although COVID-19 contributed to the failure to hold conferences, they should have been held.
      7. Lack of support with B’s condition: No finding. The panel felt it had insufficient evidence to say whether the complaint should be upheld.
  23. The Council accepted these findings too and, in line with the review panel’s recommendations, introduced further improvements to its systems and issued a further apology.
  24. At a supervision meeting in March 2021, the new social worker and her supervisor agreed that a child protection plan was no longer required. A was no longer seen to be in need and it had been found that Mr and Mrs C had not fabricated B’s condition.
  25. The child protection plan was closed in late June 2021.The children remained as children in need until September 2021. The Council then ended its involvement.

Was there fault causing injustice?

Time limits

  1. Mr C requested a stage two investigation in mid-September 2020. The Council delivered its adjudication on the stage two report in early February 2021. This was nearly six months later, nearly three times the 65 days maximum. This was fault.
  2. The stage three review panel was held 31 days after Mr C requested it. This was one day outside the limit. Given that this was during the COVID emergency, I do not intend to find fault for this delay which, in any event, caused no significant injustice to Mr C or his family.
  3. Mr C’s primary request was that Officer O should be removed from the case. By the time the report was delivered, Officer O had already left. Given that complaints about Officer O’s conduct of the case were upheld, it seems likely that the report, had it been delivered in a timely fashion, would have resulted in Officer O leaving the case earlier. This was an injustice to Mr C and his family. I have recommended a remedy for this injustice.

Remedy for the fault found in the statutory process

  1. After a statutory complaints investigation, the Ombudsman does not ordinarily reinvestigate the facts. We accept the findings of the statutory process. Where the procedure is correctly carried out, our role will usually be limited to reviewing the remedy. In my view, the Council has not adequately remedied the injustice caused by its failures. I have therefore recommended further personal remedies for Mr C and his family.
  2. Mr C’s initial complaint focused on the failures of Officer O rather than the Council as a whole. The Ombudsman does not find fault with the actions of individual officers. Instead, we find fault with councils as a whole. Where there is fault, we may recommend service improvements.
  3. The panel found there were numerous instances of poor service, poor communication and failure to abide by required procedures that were fault and caused Mr and Mrs C injustice.
  4. The Council has accepted its fault. It says it has:
    • Arranged for parents who might suffer anxieties to be warned that it is sometimes necessary for appointments to be made at short notice,
    • Created guidelines and protocols for the way online meetings area conducted and what should happen when participants cannot connect,
    • Reviewed the information made available to families during investigations,
    • Improved the systems for families to raise concerns about investigations and resolve disputes at the earliest opportunity,
    • Provided two apologies for the fault found during the investigations.
  5. The Council has already made these changes and has apologised to Mr C twice. There is no need for the Ombudsman, therefore, to make recommendations in these areas.
  6. In response to my enquiries, the Council says that, in addition to the fault found under the statutory complaints procedure, it now accepts:
      1. There is no evidence on file of how the Council came to believe that Mr and Mrs C were fabricating evidence of B having an ASD. It also accepts that there is no evidence about how it communicated about this with Mr and Mrs C.
      2. The Council did not investigate at any point whether B had an ASD. This only occurred after a court recommended he should be assessed. The Council says it would be reasonable to assume ‘there was a delay in supporting an assessment because the Council believed the condition was fabricated.
      3. The fact that the Council was investigating the theory that B’s disorder was fabricated, ‘resulted in distress for the family and a breakdown in their relationship with the social worker. This may have built towards their sense of being ‘blacklisted’ by the Council’.
      4. The Council accepts that it has not fully remedied the fault found as ‘there is no indication of a restorative conversation or action to reassure Mr C. There is limited evidence that learning from this complaint has directly impacted on practice change. More restorative actions from the complaint findings may have provided Mr C with a greater sense of having been heard’.
  7. I agree with the Council’s assessment and I made recommendations to remedy the further injustice which the Council accepts it caused and to prevent a recurrence. The Council has accepted these recommendations.

Back to top

Agreed action

  1. The Council has agreed that, within six weeks of the date of this decision, it will:
      1. Write to Mrs C, and to A and B and apologise for the fault found.
      2. Pay Mr and Mrs C £500 for the distress caused by delay and other fault.
      3. Pay B £500 for the fact that he was not assessed sooner for his condition.
      4. Pay A £200 for distress caused by delay and other fault.
  2. The Council has agreed to invite Mr and Mrs C to a ‘restorative conversation’ at which they can set out their concerns about the investigation. The Council has agreed that this will be held within three months of the date of this decision. It will then, within a further month, write to Mr and Mrs C to explain what changes it has made as a result.
  3. The Council has also agreed that if, in future, it suspects parents of fabricating evidence of an ASD, or another condition, it will arrange for an assessment of the child, where possible, to see whether the child has that condition.

Back to top

Final decision

  1. I have found the Council at fault and have closed my investigation.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

Print this page

LGO logogram

Review your privacy settings

Required cookies

These cookies enable the website to function properly. You can only disable these by changing your browser preferences, but this will affect how the website performs.

View required cookies

Analytical cookies

Google Analytics cookies help us improve the performance of the website by understanding how visitors use the site.
We recommend you set these 'ON'.

View analytical cookies

In using Google Analytics, we do not collect or store personal information that could identify you (for example your name or address). We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data. Google has developed a tool to help you opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

Privacy settings