Summary: Mr B complained about the Council’s Common Assessment Framework report and plan. Mr B says the Council’s actions caused him and his children distress. The Council was at fault for not considering Mr B’s complaint under the statutory complaint procedure. The Council has agreed to do so without further delay.

The complaint

1. Mr B complains about the Council’s Common Assessment Framework (CAF) report and plan. Mr B complains the Council:
• excluded him from the CAF;
• included inaccurate information in the CAF report; and,
• failed to address cause of the family’s problems.
2. Mr B says this caused him and his children distress.

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What I have investigated

3. I have investigated whether the Council used the correct procedure to investigate Mr B’s complaint.
4. I have not investigated the substantive matters. The reason for this is explained in paragraph 26. 

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

5. 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)
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)
7. 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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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered:
• Mr B’s complaint and the information he provided;
• documents supplied by the Council; and
• relevant legislation and guidelines.
9. Mr B and the Council were given the opportunity to comment on a draft version of this decision. Any comments received were taken into consideration before I reached my final decision.

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What I found

Legislation and Guidance

10. Section 26(3) of the Children Act, 1989 says all council functions under Part 3 of the Act may form the subject of a complaint under the statutory complaints procedure.
11. A complaint may arise about statutory social services functions, including:
• an unwelcome or disputed decision;
• concern about the quality or appropriateness of a service;
• delivery or non-delivery of services including complaints procedures;
• attitude or behaviour of staff;
• application of eligibility and assessment criteria;
• the impact on a child or young person of the application of a council policy; and
• assessment, care management and review.

(Department of Education, 2006, Statutory guidance for local authority children’s services on representations and complaints procedures)

12. Section 26(3) and section 24D of the Children Act, 1989 and section 3(1) of the Adoption and Children Act, 2002 require the responsible council to consider representations including complaints made to it by any child or young person (or a parent of his or someone who has parental responsibility for him) who is being looked after by the local authority or is not looked after by them but is in need.
13. Councils do not need a child’s consent to process their data to investigate a statutory complaint.
14. In March 2015, the Ombudsman published a report highlighting learning from its investigations into the Children Act complaints system, ‘Are we getting the best from children’s social care complaints?’. A common issue was the failure of Council’s to identify a statutory complaint. The report gave councils advice about how to avoid this fault.

What happened

15. This chronology includes key events in this case and does not cover everything that happened.
16. In July 2020, Mr B complained to the Council:
• the first CAF meeting took place before the Council told him it had started a CAF;
• did not speak to his children without their mother being present;
• it had included untrue information in its report;
• it did not add his concerns to its report; and
• his children’s CAF should not have been closed.
17. The Council responded to Mr B under its corporate complaint procedure.
18. In response to enquiries the Council advised “As it was unlikely we would obtain consent from each of [Mr B’s] children and owing to the nature of the complaint regarding his communication with the teams, we considered it appropriate to address the complaint under the Council's own complaints procedure”.

Analysis

19. Mr B is the parent of children who were the subject of a CAF and his complaint was about the Council’s statutory social services functions. Mr B was entitled to have his complaint considered by the Council under the statutory complaint procedure.
20. Councils do not need a child’s consent to process their data to investigate a statutory complaint.
21. The Council’s failure to consider Mr B’s complaint under the statutory complaints procedure is fault. Because of the Council’s fault, Mr B was denied his right to have his complaint considered under the statutory procedure.
22. I consider the Council’s corporate complaint response has satisfied stage one of the statutory complaint procedure. There is no need to repeat this stage.

Agreed action

23. Within 10 days of this final decision the Council has agreed to begin an investigation into Mr B’s complaint at stage 2 of the statutory complaint’s procedure.
24. In making this recommendation, I have considered the Ombudsman’s Guidance on Remedies.

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Final decision

25. I have found fault with the Council. This fault caused Mr B injustice and the Council has agreed to my recommendations. I have therefore completed my investigation.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

26. I have not investigated the substantive matters. This is because the Council will do this first under the statutory procedure. If Mr B is dissatisfied after the Council has completed the statutory complaints procedure, he can bring these matters back to the Ombudsman. 

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman