Summary: Mr X complains about the Council’s management of his contact with his daughter. The Council is at fault and has caused injustice to Mr X. The Council has agreed to an apology and financial remedy.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to here as Mr X, complains that the Council:
1. Overly restricted the frequency and duration of his contact with his daughter after a court case, including delaying initiating unsupervised contact until seven months after the court had ordered contact;
2. Failed to communicate with him appropriately, including failing to advise him that he could increase his contact hours with B;
3. Ignored his requests to have his daughter, B, live with him;
4. Recommended B’s maternal aunt apply for a special guardianship order (SGO), and did not discuss this with him; and
5. Delayed assessing him for residency;
6. Rushed his residency/care assessment and pre-empted its decision.

He says the Council has failed to acknowledge the significant distress these faults have caused him and their impact on his relationship with B.

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What I have investigated

2. I have investigated the Council’s approach to contact between Mr X and B.

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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 Mr X and considered information provided by Mr X and the Council. I have sent Mr X and the Council my draft statement. I have considered their comments before finalising my decision.
6. 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

Legal context

7. When a council is responsible for looking after a child, it must allow reasonable contact between the child and their parents. (Children Act 1989, section 34)

Key events

8. Mr X, whose first language is not English, has a daughter, B. The Council removed B from her mother’s care for child protection reasons in late 2018. Mr X was estranged from B’s mother at the time so was unaware of this. The Council placed B with her maternal relative, Z, following a positive assessment of Z. The family court ordered the Council to trace Mr X. The Council made contact with him in March 2019.
9. The Council held a looked after child (LAC) review meeting, at which professionals involved with B discussed her welfare, in March. The Council has said it was unable to invite Mr X to this as it had not provided B’s Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) with his contact details.
10. In June 2019, the court gave Mr X parental responsibility for B and approved a contact plan. Mr X says he made clear to the Council at this time that he wanted custody of B but that he understood this needed to be guided by her.
11. The Council decided Mr X’s meetings with B should initially be supervised by its staff while B built up a relationship with her father. Mr X says the Council told him contact would be reviewed every four weeks. The Council contends it committed only to regular reviews.
12. At the first contact review meeting in July 2019 Mr X says he was advised his contact with B could increase from one hour to two hours per week. He asked if frequency of contact could also increase given it was now the summer holidays, B was requesting further contact and Z worked full time. Mr X says the Council told him contact could not be increased further at that time but that the position would be regularly reviewed.
13. The next contact review meeting was held in early August 2019. The Council has said it was agreed at this meeting that contact would be increased to 3-4 hours on a Thursday afternoon, which would now be supervised by Z. It has provided documentation supporting its account.
14. Mr X denies he was told his contact time could be increased. He told me that after this meeting he continued to see B for two hours at a time. He has since complained that given his first language was not English the Council should have followed up with written clarification as to what had been agreed.
15. Mr X said no September contact review meeting was held. He said he and his partner rang the Council multiple times between September and October. He said they either did not receive a response or were promised call-backs that were never delivered. The Council has said this was due to staff absence and has apologised.
16. In September 2019 the Council held another LAC review meeting. The review record states that: “the local authority wants to secure [B]’s legal permanence with [Z] via a Special Guardianship Order – this is something which [Z] is willing to consider and is working towards”. The record also says B’s relationship with Mr X was developing well.
17. Mr X did not attend the September LAC review meeting. The Council said it left messages on his voicemail but did not have Mr X’s address on its system so could not write a letter. Mr X said the voicemail messages were inaudible. He pointed out that by that time the Council had not only visited his home address but that it was also having regular meetings with Z, who the Council knew was supervising Mr X’s contact visits with B. It was therefore open to the Council to obtain his contact details from Z or pass a message to him via her. The Council has apologised for what happened.
18. One of the September review meeting recommendations was for a contact review meeting to be held with Mr X by end of November 2019. Mr X says the November contact review meeting never happened.
19. In October a new social worker was allocated B’s case and managed it until April 2020. This social worker did not record minutes of contact meetings to the Council’s systems.
20. The Council held a contact review meeting on 10 December 2019. No minutes of the meeting are available. Mr X says he was not told this was a contact review meeting. He says he was advised that supervision would be reduced, with Z leaving Mr X and B alone, but remaining in close proximity for short periods. He says he was advised that if this went well, he could progress to fully unsupervised contact. Mr X has said he was happy with this plan. He said the Council undertook to inform Z of the proposal.
21. At this meeting Mr X also discovered that the September LAC review meeting had taken place and of the Council’s plan for Z to obtain a SGO for B. He says this came as a surprise to him and he was extremely distressed by this. The Council has told me the possibility of Z gaining an SGO was discussed in the court proceedings and Mr X did not oppose this. Mr X says he does not recall this and may not have understood what was being proposed.
22. In late December 2019 Mr X met B’s IRO for the first time. He advised her he wished to have future custody of B or shared care with Z.
23. Mr X had three further meetings with B, none of which involved unsupervised time. He said he learned from Z towards the end of January 2020 that the Council had not contacted her about the proposed changes. He then complained to the Council, which contacted Z and apologised for failing to do so sooner. In the final week of January Mr X had half an hour’s unsupervised time with B.
24. At a contact review meeting on in February 2020 the Council agreed Mr X would be allowed to take B for an activity in the community unsupervised.
25. In mid-March direct contact between Mr X and B stopped due to Government restrictions aimed at controlling the COVID-19 virus.
26. In May 2020 the Council began an assessment of Mr X as a full-time carer of B. The Council’s records show this followed a period during which Mr X was unclear about his wishes. Minutes of a discussion in April state that Mr X wanted shared care, full-time care and “overnights”. Mr X’s position is that he always wanted full custody of B but knew B’s own wishes and best interests had to be taken into account.
27. Minutes of a LAC review meeting in July 2020 note that B was seeing her father on a weekly basis however face to face contact had only recently resumed and “this was being progressed to unsupervised”. The Council was unable to tell me when supervised contact finally ended.
28. The Council has told me it has learned from Mr X that Z was present at some contacts which were meant to be unsupervised. The Council said it had no way of knowing this was happening without being advised by Mr X. A staff member added that Mr X “doesn’t tell you what is happening as he says he doesn’t want to ‘rock the boat’. He will say it has been unsupervised when it hasn’t.” Mr X has strongly denied using the term “rock the boat” and that he made the Council aware at the first opportunity. He said he and his partner were attempting to maintain positive relationships.
29. The July LAC review meeting minutes also note the Council was completing an assessment of Z following her SGO application.
30. B had her first overnight stay with Mr X in November 2020. The Council initially told me it would complete its assessment of Mr X as a full-time carer for B by the end of the year. However, by end of January the assessment has still not been completed. When I asked the Council why this was, it said this was due to Mr X and his partner preferring to wait until B was used to staying overnight at his home.
31. I asked the Council about arrangements it had made to assist Mr X’s understanding of events given English is not his first language. It said it had offered him a translation service for a contact review in February 2020, but he had declined. A Council staff member insisted on an interpreter being present for a subsequent meeting. The Council told me its officers felt Mr X was articulate and presented his complaints well. Responding to the Council’s comments, Mr X reiterated that a written record of the Council’s decisions would have been invaluable to him.
32. In response to my draft decision Mr X challenged the Council’s reasoning for ending face-to-face communication when the national lockdown was announced. He pointed out that national guidance allowed children of two households to move between these. The Council stated that this was because Mr X’s partner had moved into his home and it had not performed police checks on her.

Analysis

33. More than a year after Mr X was awarded contact by the court, Z was still supervising his meetings in the community with his daughter. The Council has been unable to justify the length of this period to me. In response to my draft decision, the Council stated that contact became unsupervised by February 2020. However, the July 2020 LAC meeting minutes refer to Mr X’s contact “progressing to unsupervised”. It therefore remains unclear when supervision finally ended. This is fault by the Council.
34. No contact review meetings took place between August and December 2019. Mr X believed review meetings were supposed to be held every four weeks. The Council has said it agreed contact should be reviewed frequently or regularly. In my view a four-month gap between reviews was too long to meet the criteria of frequent or regular review. Had the reviews been held at closer intervals it seems likely the supervision requirement would have been lifted earlier. The Council has agreed that a four-month gap between reviews is too long.
35. The documentation shows the Council agreed in December 2019 that Mr X could have some unsupervised time with B. However, it failed to inform Z of this, so she continued to supervise all Mr X’s contact sessions until the end of January 2020. The Council has agreed there was a lack of communication with Z.
36. Mr X has since told the Council that after Z was informed of this, she continued to attend contact sessions that were supposed to be unsupervised. The Council told me Mr X did not initially report Z’s actions, which he denies. In my view Mr X was in a difficult position as Z remained in a supervisory role over the remainder of his contact visits. Having appointed Z as a supervisor, the Council has some responsibility for Z’s actions. The Council has shared no evidence it has addressed Z’s behaviour with her or taken steps to ensure her intrusion into unsupervised sessions does not happen again.
37. The Council has agreed that Mr X’s contact time with his daughter was supervised for longer than it should have been.
38. The Council has provided documentation to support its case that an increase of contact hours was verbally agreed in August 2019. Mr X has said he was not aware of this. The Council has pointed out that Mr X’s command of English is good and that he turned down the offer of interpreter services in 2020. However even people with a good command of English are at a disadvantage compared to native speakers and it is possible for them to misinterpret or miss details. Following up verbal decisions with a written record would have been good practice. Mr X and his partner then experienced difficulties in contacting the Council in September and October 2019 due to staff absence. This is fault by the Council.
39. Mr X was distressed to find out from minutes of the LAC review meeting in September 2019 that the Council wanted Z to make an SGO application. The Council was at fault for failing to invite Mr X to the review meeting. It is also at fault for failing to discuss its plans with regards to the SGO with Mr X. It has told me these plans arose during the earlier court proceedings and that Mr X did not oppose them then. Mr X’s relationship with B had developed in the interim and he had expressed a desire for greater involvement in her life. My view is that the Council should have discussed the SGO with Mr X if it still intended to pursue this course of action in September. The necessity for this became imperative once Mr X had been wrongly excluded from the LAC meeting. This is fault by the Council. In response to my draft decision the Council agreed Mr X should have taken part in B’s reviews. It said it had tightened its practice to ensure all parents are consulted in relation to permanency plans.
40. The Council’s documentation does not support Mr X’s claim that it ignored his request to have her live with him. He states that he first raised this issue in June 2019, however in my view an assessment would have been premature at this point. He is on record as having asked to be assessed as a full-time carer in late December 2019. An assessment did not begin until May 2020. The Council has said the delay was due to Mr X not knowing what he wanted. However, Mr X was consistent in asking for some form of overnight care. He had not reached a firm conclusion by May but the assessment began regardless. It is therefore unclear why an assessment could not have been carried out earlier. The assessment has still not been completed. This is fault by the Council which has accepted that the assessment did not start in a timely manner.
41. As the assessment is still ongoing there is no evidence it was rushed, or its decision pre-empted.
42. In relation to the COVID-19 lockdown period beginning in March 2020, it was open for the Council to allow Mr X to take his daughter for walks outside. The Council has provided no evidence this was explored. This is fault by the Council.
43. Collectively the faults described have resulted in significant injustice to Mr X, whose contact with his daughter has been subjected to intrusion over a lengthy period which the Council has been unable to fully justify. As a result of the Council’s communication failures Mr X has also lost trust in the Council at a time when it is closely scrutinising him and his ability to care for his child. The Council could also have begun its assessment of Mr X as a carer for B sooner than it did. This has caused Mr X stress and distress.
44. I initially recommended the Council apologise to Mr X and pay him £500 to compensate for stress caused by its faults and for his time and trouble in making the complaint. Mr X told me he felt this sum did not reflect the harm caused by the Council to his daughter and himself. He pointed out that it is now more than 18 months since he was awarded parental responsibility for his daughter, yet she is still being cared for by her aunt. Should he be positively assessed the move into his care may therefore result in more upset for his daughter than would have been the case if matters had moved more swiftly.
45. Given my additional finding of fault in relation to the lockdown period and Mr X’s representations I decided to increase the remedy to £1500. This is to allow Mr X to pay for a period of counselling for himself and B should the need arise.

Agreed action

46. The Council has agreed that within one month of my decision it will:
1. Pay Mr X £1,500 in compensation for prolonging the supervision of his contact with his daughter, prohibiting face to face contact in lockdown, its poor communication and delaying his assessment as a carer for her; and
2. Apologise to Mr X.

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Final decision

47. I have completed my investigation with a finding of fault by the Council for which I have agreed a financial remedy and an apology.

Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman