Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the decision to place his child on a Child Protection plan or the Council’s handling of his complaint. The Council has already investigated and responded to Mr X’s concerns under all three stages of the statutory complaint procedure. It has apologised and taken action to improve procedures as a result of Mr X’s complaint. We could not add to the Council’s responses or make a different finding of the kind Mr X wants.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the Council’s decision to place his disabled child on a Child Protection plan in 2021. He says the Council’s report for the Initial Child Protection Conference (ICPC) contained numerous errors and damaged his relationship with professionals involved in his child’s care. Mr X believes the three-stage complaint process did not properly address his concerns about his ongoing relationships and interactions with professionals.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
4. 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:

• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

7. The statutory children’s complaints procedure was set up to provide children, young people and those involved in their welfare with access to an independent, thorough and prompt response to their concerns. Because of this, if a council has investigated something under the statutory children’s complaint process, the Ombudsman would not normally re-investigate it.
8. However, we may look at whether there were any flaws in the stage two investigation or stage three review panel that could call the findings into question.
9. The Council concluded its consideration of Mr X’s complaints under stage three of the statutory complaint process in December 2024. This included the complaint elements summarised in paragraph 1 above and other issues.
10. The Stage Three Review Panel agreed with all but one of the outcomes reached at stage two. It decided one element of Mr X’s complaint should be changed from partially upheld to upheld. The stage two complaint investigation and stage three review panel concluded communication and recording keeping in this case could have been better. The Council agreed with the findings reached at stages two and three. It apologised for not advising Mr X of his right to appeal the handling and decision of the ICPC at the time. The Council also confirmed it had placed a record in its case files of Mr X’s comments and objections to specific parts of the Council’s report to the ICPC.
11. During the Review Panel hearing, Mr X expressed a wish for the entire ICPC records and report to be removed from his child’s file, given its impact on Mr X’s ongoing interaction with professionals involved in his child’s care. The Review Panel noted that this situation had caused Mr X considerable distress and humiliation at an already stressful time when his child was ill and hospitalised for some of the period. Neither the Review Panel nor the Ombudsman has the authority to remove records in the way Mr X wants.
12. The Council has responded to Mr X’s complaints in detail and upheld it in part. It has accepted the stage three Panel’s recommendations to improve its service in future. We will not normally investigate a complaint which has already been through all stages of the statutory process. It is not a good use of public money to do so. In this case, the question for us is whether our intervention would add anything to the investigation the Council has already carried out. There is nothing to suggest that it would do so.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because further investigation by us could not add to the Council’s responses.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman