Summary: We cannot investigate this complaint about the Council’s consideration of safeguarding concerns. The law prevents us from investigating complaints that have been part of court proceedings. For the remainder, we will not investigate because there is not enough evidence of fault in how the Council handled Mr X’s complaint to justify us investigating.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained the Council did not properly consider his concerns about the care his children were receiving. Mr X said the Council treated him unfairly and did not consider the wishes of the children.
2. Mr X said this caused him distress, and loss of contact with the children.
3. Mr X wants the Council to admit its errors and accept it has put the children in danger. Mr X also wants contact with the children to resume.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
5. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)
6. We have the power to start or end an investigation into a complaint about actions the law allows us to investigate. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we think the issues could reasonably be, or have been mentioned as part of the legal proceedings regarding a closely related matter. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 24A(6) and 34B(8), as amended, section 34(B))
7. 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. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
9. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

10. Mr X expressed his concerns about the care his children were receiving to social workers. Mr X said he did not feel listened to and that the children’s views were not considered.
11. Contact and residence issues for the children were considered by the court. As part of the court proceedings, Mr X had the opportunity to provide his childcare concerns so the court could consider them.
12. We cannot investigate this part of Mr X’s complaint. The law prevents us from investigating complaints about matters a court has considered.
13. Mr X complained to the Council, which considered his representations about these issues, through all three stages of the children’s statutory complaints process. On balance, the issues that Mr X complained about are not separable from the matters the court considered.
14. When a complaint has been through the three-stage children’s statutory complaints process, this means a complainant has already had access to an independent investigation.
15. We will therefore not normally reinvestigate such a complaint unless we have reason to believe the previous investigation was flawed.
16. I have reviewed the documents from Mr X’s complaint, and I note that:

• each part of the complaint was considered and addressed by the Council;
• the investigator made extensive reference to case records, relevant guidance and the contribution of those interviewed as part of the investigation;
• on the points of the complaint that were not upheld, the findings of the stage two investigator do not appear obviously unreasonable, given the evidence summarised in the report;
• the stage three panel report appears to reinforce that the quality of the stage two report was satisfactory.

17. Based on the above, we will not investigate this part of Mr X’s complaint. There is not enough evidence of fault in how the Council considered Mr X’s complaint to justify our investigation.

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Final decision

18. We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint because the law prevents us from considering complaints about the start of court action or what happened in court. For the remainder, there is not enough evidence of fault in how the Council considered his complaint to justify us investigating.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman