Summary: We will not investigate this complaint that the Council failed to act appropriately to safeguard the complainant’s child. This is because the complaint has already been substantially upheld and investigation by the Ombudsman would achieve nothing significant.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains that the Council failed to act appropriately to safeguard his son and failed to keep him informed of relevant matters, thereby preventing him from intervening to protect his son from harm

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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 could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, 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. Mr X’s son lives with his mother and her partner. Mr X says the Council regarded his son as a Child in Need and implemented a safety plan. He complains that the Council failed to inform him of incidents and risk factors within the household, and that the Council removed the agreed safety plan and ceased its involvement with his son without his consent.
6. Mr X says that the Council’s failure to act and failure to keep him informed left his son in a potentially harmful situation, and prevented him from acting to mitigate the risk.
7. Mr X’s complaint has completed the Council’s complaint procedure and was substantially upheld. The Council accepts that it should have informed him of its concerns about the situation in his son’s household and its failure to do so denied him the opportunity to take action himself. It has apologised and undertaken to learn from the complaint. It did not however agree that there were grounds on which to take further action relating to the family.
8. The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint. Where a complaint has been substantially upheld before coming to the Ombudsman, we will not normally intervene. Our intervention in these circumstances would effectively amount to a re-investigation of complaints which have already been upheld and would not therefore be warranted.
9. It is not for us to take a view on whether Mr X’s son should have remained a Child in Need, or whether action should have been taken to enforce the safety plan. That is a matter for the professional judgement of the Council’s officers. It is not for the Ombudsman to intervene to substitute an alternative view. Our intervention would not therefore achieve anything significant.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because our intervention would achieve nothing significant.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman