Summary: Mr X complained about the Council’s children’s social care service. We have discontinued our investigation, because the Council has not yet provided Mr X with its final complaint response.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains to us about various ways in which he feels the Council’s children’s social care service has failed him and his daughter (Y).

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint unless we are satisfied the organisation knows about the complaint and has had an opportunity to investigate and reply. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to notify the organisation of the complaint and give it an opportunity to investigate and reply. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(5), section 34(B)6)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered evidence provided by Mr X and the Council as well as relevant law and policy.
4. Mr X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

What happened

5. In December 2024, the Council began ‘child protection’ enquiries in relation to Y.
6. In January 2025, Mr X began making a series of complaints to the Council. He did so over the following month. The complaints covered Mr X’s dissatisfaction with the Council’s social work report, its child protection plan and – extensively – the conduct of its social worker.
7. The Council responded to Mr X in March. It said it believed it had properly complied with its child protection duties. It did not agree with his views on Y’s social worker.
8. Mr X asked to escalate his complaint, and said he did not feel the Council’s response covered all the issues he had raised. He also sent a further 13 complaint emails.
9. The Council refused to escalate Mr X’s complaint. It said it was dealing with Y’s case under ‘pre-proceedings’ and, if Mr X was unhappy, he should speak to his legal representative.
10. Mr X complained to us, saying:
• The Council’s social worker had written ‘multiple’ reports which included false or misleading allegations without supporting evidence. These reports were being used to justify continued social work involvement with Mr X’s family.
• The legal threshold for a care order had not been met. Yet a child protection plan remained in place, without any identified risk of harm to Y. This breached statutory guidance and interfered with Mr X and Y’s human rights. And the Council had failed, despite repeated requests, to provide Mr X with justification for the child protection plan.
• The Council failed to intervene when Y’s school “blocked her access to counselling and removed her school advocate without replacement”. It then undermined Mr X when he tried to find a new school for Y.
• The Council’s social worker “made derogatory comments directly to [Y] … which were intimidating and inappropriate”.
11. In May, we accepted Mr X’s complaint for investigation.
12. In July, Mr X contacted us a further 18 times with updates to his complaint. He made further misconduct allegations against Y’s social worker. He also said:
• Despite a positive parenting assessment by an independent social worker, and no new safeguarding concerns, the Council had still not ended the pre-proceedings process. The solicitor in charge of this for the Council was absent with no known return date. This had left Mr X and Y in limbo.
• Since the pre-proceeding process began (and up until early July), Mr X had received no documents relating to Y’s child protection plan.
• Despite no ongoing safeguarding concerns, the child protection plan remained in place.
• The Council was using a chart in its decision-making – entitled ‘spiral of harm’ – which was not relevant, and which was designed to paint Mr X in a negative light (against the findings of the recent independent assessment).
• Continued child protection intervention was, in itself, causing Y harm.
13. In the meantime, Mr X had also been writing to the Council about his dissatisfaction. In mid-July, the Council agreed to investigate his concerns under its corporate complaints procedure.
14. The scope of the Council’s complaint investigation is wide. But it includes a consideration of the following complaints:
• Misleading and inaccurate information provided by Y’s social worker in reports.
• Misconduct and poor practice by the social worker.
• The Council’s use of the ‘spiral of harm’ chart.
• The Council’s handling of the pre-proceedings processes.
15. The Council has also informed Mr X that, if he wants to challenge Y’s child protection plan, there is a specific complaints procedure he needs to follow. It has provided details of how he can do this.

My findings

16. We cannot investigate a complaint against a council until it has had the opportunity to fully respond. We will not generally accept a complaint for investigation until someone has exhausted the council’s internal complaints procedure. We cannot get involved in the oversight of a council’s ongoing complaint handling.
17. Not every part of Mr X’s original complaint to us is now being considered (or re-considered) by the Council. But a significant proportion of it is – and so are many of Mr X’s subsequent, additional complaints to us.
18. Furthermore, Mr X’s challenges to the child protection plan are yet to be dealt with through the procedure the Council uses specifically for this purpose.
19. This means Mr X has not had a final response from the Council to most of the issues he raises with us. He should wait until he gets that final response, or responses, before returning to us and asking us to consider his complaint.
20. Although some of the issues Mr X raises with us are not part of the Council’s ongoing complaint investigation, it would not make sense to separate them from the rest of the complaint. All of these issues should be dealt with together if Mr X decides he wants to come back to us after getting the Council’s final response.

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Decision

21. I have discontinued my investigation. It would be reasonable for Mr X to wait for the Council to fully respond to his complaint before he asks us to investigate it.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman