Summary: We will not investigate this complaint that the Council carried out a Child Protection enquiry without the complainant’s consent or input. This is because investigation would not achieve what the complainant wants, or lead to a different outcome.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Miss X, complains that the Council carried out a child protection enquiry without informing her or seeking her input.

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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:

• 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

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

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My assessment

5. Miss X’s children have been the subject of child protection action by the Council. Miss X complains about the Council’s conduct in the course of a Child and Family Assessment. She says the Council did not tell her about the assessment, and that the assessment report inaccurately presents her as having refused to engage with social workers. She says this is false.
6. Miss X says that she did refuse an assessment with a student social worker, and that she thought a subsequent contact was a prank call. She says she was not informed that the Council had decided to carry out an investigation under Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 without consent and was given no opportunity to have input into the assessment. She says that, as a result, the assessment report gives a false impression of her and misrepresents her views. She wants the Council to admit its mistakes and amend the assessment.
7. In response to Miss X’s complaint, the Council has accepted that it failed to inform her of the outcome of the strategy meeting which decided to initiate the assessment without consent. However, it does not accept that it misrepresented her refusal to agree to an assessment, or that it did not make reasonable attempts to communicate with her.
8. The Ombudsman will not investigate Miss X’s complaint. This is because our intervention would not achieve the outcome she is seeking. We do not ask councils to change the content of assessment reports retrospectively, as they reflect the views of officers at the time they were written. The most we would want to see in these circumstances is that a record of the complainant’s dissenting views are added to the file. Miss X has set out her views in her complaint to the Council. This forms part of the case record, and the Ombudsman would seek to achieve nothing further.
9. The assessment was subsequently placed before an Initial Child Protection Conference. The child protection process provides appropriate opportunities to challenge the contents of reports and the views of Council officers, and there are no grounds for the Ombudsman to intervene. If Miss X believes the assessment report contains false or inaccurate information about her, she may wish to pursue her right to rectification under data protection law.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because investigation would not achieve what she wants, or lead to a different outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman