Summary: Ms X complains about the Council’s decision-making in relation to a child protection investigation that she says was not justified. The Council is at fault. The Council has agreed to apologise to Mrs X and pay her a financial remedy.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to here as Ms X, complains that the Council’s wrongly decided to conduct a child protection investigation and to place her children on a child protection plan on grounds of neglect and that it did not follow correct procedures. She thinks the decisions were made in an attempt to delay her appeal to a tribunal about her daughter’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) and to influence her in her dispute with the Council over her housing needs. She says her complaints about this were not properly investigated.
2. Ms X says the child protection process caused considerable distress to herself and her children as well as potentially affecting her future work prospects.

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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 question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), 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 spoke to Ms X and considered information provided by Ms X and the Council. I shared this draft statement with Ms X and the Council and considered comments from both parties before finalising my decision.

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What I found

Strategy discussions and Working Together to Safeguard Children

7. A strategy discussion or strategy meeting is normally held after an initial assessment indicates that a child has suffered or is likely to suffer significant harm. The strategy discussion determines whether there is grounds for a Section 47 enquiry (see below).
8. Working Together To Safeguard Children is statutory guidance on inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in accordance with the Children Act 1989 and Children Act 2004.
9. The guidance covers the legislative requirements and expectations on individual services to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. It states that the statutory partners required to participate in strategy discussions are children’s services, health and the police and that other relevant professionals may be involved as appropriate. It states that a strategy discussion

Child protection investigations

10. If a Council has reason to believe a child is at risk of, or has suffered, significant harm it must carry out a child protection investigation known as a Section 47 enquiry. If the investigation confirms that a child has suffered or is likely to suffer significant harm, the council should hold a child protection conference. This is a multi-agency meeting chaired by an independent person. The conference may conclude that the child needs to be placed on a child protection plan in order to protect them from harm. If the threshold for significant harm is not met, but professionals think the child concerned needs additional support from the council, the child may be placed instead on a child in need plan.

Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs)

11. An EHCP is a document which sets out the education, healthcare and social care needs of a child or young person for whom extra support is needed in school, beyond that which the school can provide. It also sets out the provision the Council will make to meet these needs.
12. Parents may appeal the Council’s decisions on the content of an EHCP to the Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND) Tribunal.

What happened

13. Ms X has three children. Two of the children, A and B, who are both now in their late teens, are significantly disabled due to degenerative conditions. Mrs X was in dispute with the Council which felt her home should be adapted to meet the children’s needs. Mrs X felt a purpose-built home would be more appropriate for her children. There were other complicating factors, such as the fact that Mrs X was separated, but not divorced and the home was not in her sole name.
14. In early November 2019 the Council called an initial strategy meeting to address concerns about neglect and emotional abuse of the children. Other concerns were raised about support for the children within their school. The Council initiated a S47 enquiry. The Council has provided me with documentation that supports its decision to do this.
15. Later that month, professionals involved with the family met at an Initial Child Protection Conference (ICPC). The Council’s disability team’s report to the conference stated that:
1. A and B were at risk of falls because they were living in an unsuitable property which required adaptations that Mrs X had refused.
2. A commode had been identified as an interim option to home adaptations and “if [B] were to accept a commode for now, this would enable carers’ support to be offered”. This would reduce manual handling risk to Mrs X.
3. A and B had overheard Mrs X conversations with professionals and been exposed to Mrs X’s opinions about B’s future as well as adult conversations about their father. In particular Mrs X had:

- spoken to B and in front of B about her moving into supported living when she turned 18, causing B to be upset; and

- spoken negatively about the children’s father, how he had abandoned his children and bought a bigger house for his new family and about their father’s plans.

4. Provision of other equipment such as a wheelchair had been delayed due to challenges from Mrs X over the suitability of items recommended by professionals.
5. A and B were socially isolated due to not being able to have friends back to their home due to the cramped conditions there. A was a member of a sailing club. B had said she did not want to have friends home but A did want this. Mrs X took the children to restaurants, the cinema and shops.
6. Mrs X had missed healthcare appointments including an appointment about B’s wheelchair cushion and a hydrotherapy appointment for A and had failed to respond to emails about these. The number of missed appointments or the impact of these was not stated. The report stated that some of these appointments “would have had a medical impact on the children” such as the cushion appointment.
4. The report concluded that the Council was worried because A and B had missed appointments and did not have the right equipment and that Mrs X had not accepted adaptions in the home which meant the children were “not as safe as they could be”. The Council had concerns over a risk of falls and to the children’s physical and emotional well-being. The report recommended placing A and B on a child protection plan on the basis of neglect on the basis of the missed appointments and delays with equipment and adaptations.
5. All professionals at the ICPC scored risk to the children at 3.5 to 4.5 (where 0 is high risk and 10 is lowest risk) and recommended a child protection plan under the category of neglect, based mainly on the concerns about housing adaptations and equipment.
6. In December 2019 Mrs X complained about the decision. She pointed out that she had agreed to the commode being installed prior to the conference. The commode and carers to support toileting had not yet been provided. She also said there was no evidence her children had been harmed by overhearing or taking part in conversations.
7. In February 2020 a second child protection conference was held. The Council’s report to the conference advised leaving the children on the child protection plan on the basis that the home adaptations and equipment professionals felt were needed to keep the children safe were still not in place and that B needed a consistent plan for her future. The conference concluded that the child protection plan should remain.
8. A third child protection conference was held in late summer 2020. The Council’s report to the conference said B should remain on the child protection plan due to risk of falls arising from the ongoing lack of adaptions to the home. Plans for B’s future were not mentioned.
9. The conference minutes noted that home adaptations had not been carried out and now would not be as the case had now been closed to housin. Healthcare workers stated that as the adaptations were now outside of Mrs X’s control the threshold for child protection could not be met. They stated that the risk of falls could never be eliminated. The Council then agreed to step down to a child in need plan.
10. In October 2020, following a request for escalation from Mrs X, an Independent Investigating Officer (IO) issued a report on Mrs X’s complaints. The IO report upheld none of the complaints. Mrs X asked for further escalation.
11. She said that many of the issues of concern raised by the Council to the ICPC had been resolved prior to it being convened or were not her fault. She felt the Council had investigated her unduly and had not provided sufficient support.
12. In March 2021 the Stage 3 panel convened. It said it noted Mrs X’s points but could not address them as it was not an investigatory body and could not consider new issues or information. It said the Council’s provision of some equipment was “not timely” and recommended an apology for this. It also noted a failure to record a social worker’s visit to Mrs X’s home.
13. Mrs X then approached us. She told me she suspected the child protection proceedings were initiated as a means of stalling the SEND Tribunal process. She said the Council had cited the child protection meetings in a request to the tribunal for an extension to a deadline. Mrs X has sent me other information including information exchanged during the SEND process which she considers to be evidence of the Council’s intention. I cannot investigate the SEND process as this is outside of our jurisdiction.
14. I asked the Council for details of the healthcare appointments missed by Mrs X, including recent appointments. The Council said it did not have these. It also said it did not carry out any assessment of the impact of the missed appointments.
15. Mrs X has said that the demands of transporting her children were partly responsible for the missed appointments. Information provided by the Council and Mrs X shows that she was making journeys to and from school each day so that she could support B with toileting as the school’s facilities and support were not suitable. In 2018 and 2019 B was not eligible for help with school transport as the Council did not deem the children’s school to be the nearest suitable school. By December 2019 B’s school was named in her EHCP and she became eligible for transport twice per day.
16. Mrs X was in dispute with professionals about various items of equipment, adaptations and forms of support. For example, the family had repeatedly requested weekly hydrotherapy sessions however the Council would not initially provide this. Eventually the Council agreed to make direct payments to Mrs X to fund community-based activities for their children. Direct payments are payments made to carers of disabled children which allows them to commission or purchase support directly. Mrs X used the direct payments to pay for support to take the children to regular hydrotherapy.
17. The Council told me health professionals advised it in October 2019 that Mrs X had agreed to speak to B about a commode. In early November several weeks before the Council complete its report to the ICPC, Mrs X advised the Council by email that B had agreed to a commode. The Council did not confirm B’s wishes until early December, after the ICPC.

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Analysis

30. Based on the evidence seen to date, the Council was not at fault in deciding to conduct a child protection enquiry. It has provided documentation that supports this decision. We cannot investigate SEND Tribunal proceedings.
31. The Council’s decision to recommend a child protection plan in part due to the amount of appointments that had been missed was not properly made. The Council did not establish the proportion of recent appointments that had been missed and there is no evidence of proper exploration of the impact of these missed appointments on the children. If the Council had established which appointments had been missed recently and why, it may have been in a better position to support Mrs X.
32. The Council has accepted that the conference report prepared for the meeting did not contain all relevant information, particularly concerning the impact of missed appointments. The report also contained a factual inaccuracy as Mrs X had said her daughter would accept a commode. The deficits in the report meant the issues and concerns were not fully explicit to Mrs X at that point.
33. I cannot say that had the Council’s report been of a higher standard, a child protection plan would not have been made. This is because the ICPC made its decision on the basis of recommendations from numerous professionals and while Mrs X disagrees with their decisions, I have seen no evidence the decisions were incorrectly made. I can say there was injustice to Mrs X who felt the Council had not treated her fairly.
34. The Council’s report to the ICPC also raised concerns about the emotional impact of Mrs X’s information sharing with the children. The Council considered that Mrs X’s discussions with B and in front of her about her condition and future were harming B or putting her at risk of harm.
35. It is unclear from the documentation what evidence there was for this concern, beyond observations that B became upset on learning Mrs X felt she should live outside the home on reaching adulthood. It is also unclear from the documentation what the Council thought Mrs X should have done instead with regards to sharing information with B, who was then a young adult, about her condition and future. The documentation makes clear B wanted to stay at home but that Mrs X felt that it was in her own and B’s best interests for B to live independently after adulthood. These matters required discussion with B.
36. The Council appears to have assumed that Mrs X’s comments about their father were likely to have a significant negative emotional impact on the children but there is no evidence on the record to support this assumption. Mrs X denies any negative impact and there is no evidence the Council explored this with the children prior to the child protection plan. The Council has accepted that given the children’s ages it should have consulted them directly on their wishes and feelings about their father.
37. The Council initially held Mrs X’s failure to agree the adaptations constituted a risk of significant harm to the children through risk of falls. However, once the Council closed Mrs X’s housing case as she had become ineligible for funding, health professionals decided that lack of adaptations no longer constituted a risk of significant harm as the adaptions were outside of Mrs X’s control. The Council then reconsidered its position. The documentation does not explain why it did this. This is fault by the Council. If it considered B was considered to be at significant risk in an un-adapted home it is unclear why this would change because the Council would no longer fund the adaptations.
38. The Council has also accepted there was delay in responding to the stage 2 complaint.
39. The Council has agreed to apologise for the faults above and to pay £500 to Mrs X to remedy distress caused and for her time and trouble in bringing her complaint.
40. In addition, though this is not a finding of fault, I am taking this opportunity to raise concerns over the thresholds of care applied to Mrs X. Concerns were raised in the social worker’s report to the ICPC, for example, that the children were not able to have friends back to their home, despite A (but not B) wishing to do this and that this meant A was socially isolated.
41. There is scant evidence in the documentation to explain the justification for presenting this as a child protection concern given both children attended school and had the company of two siblings at home and neither child expressed a wish for social trips out with a PA. B also attended a sailing club. In addition, Mrs X, like any other adult, is entitled to decide who visits her home. There is no evidence the Council considered whether Mrs X, as the sole carer for three children, two of whom are significantly disabled, had her own reasons for not wanting additional teenage visitors.

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Agreed action

42. The Council has agreed that within one month of my final decision it will:
1. pay Mrs X £500 to remedy distress caused and for her time and trouble in bringing the complaint; and
2. apologise to Mrs X.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman