Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council dealt with child protection matters. This is because there is either no fault causing the complainant a significant injustice, we could not add to the investigation carried out by the Council or because we have already considered the issues raised.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the Council’s children’s services and its involvement with child protection matters concerning his children.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

3. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. We previously investigated a complaint from Mr X. Some of the issues he raised in his complaint to the Council and the Ombudsman in this complaint are about matters that we considered under our previous investigation. We cannot accept repeat complaints about the same matters and so will not consider these same matters again.
7. Some of the issues raised though have not previously been considered by the Ombudsman so I have considered if we could or should consider them further. Mr X complained that he was not told about a safeguarding concern made about his daughter, that the Council failed to investigate the safeguarding concern and that the Council failed to respond to his recent correspondence about this matter.
8. I will not investigate Mr X’s complaint that he was not told about the safeguarding concern made about his child. This is because the Council upheld this element of his complaint, acknowledged it should have informed Mr X and said that learning would be taken from this element of his complaint. Having considered this point I do not see that further investigation into this point would achieve anything more meaningful. Therefore, we could not add to the Council’s response regarding this point.
9. Upon receiving the referral in question, the Council spoke with Mr X’s child and made enquiries with the police before concluding that there was no evidence that the event that had been reported had taken place, and therefore no further action was needed. The Council made appropriate enquires before reaching its decision and therefore there is no evidence of fault in how the Council dealt with this matter. The Ombudsman is not able to question the merits of the Council’s decision to take no further action in the absence of fault.
10. Mr X says the Council failed to return his calls or that officers he spoke to were unhelpful or failed to escalate his calls to a manager. Whilst I appreciate that Mr X may have found it frustrating trying to seek answers to the questions he raised about the referral, this in itself does not amount to a significant enough injustice to warrant investigation and the Council has now provided a detailed response to his concerns in its complaint response. I will therefore not investigate this element of his complaint.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault causing an injustice, we could not add to the investigation carried out by the Council and because some points have previously been investigated by the Ombudsman.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman