Summary: We will not investigate this complaint that the Council has not offered an appropriate assessment for the complainant’s daughter. This is because there is no evidence of fault on the Council’s part causing injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I will refer to as Mrs B, complains that the Council has failed to offer her daughter an appropriate assessment of her social care needs.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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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.
5. The complainant has had the opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered her comments before making a final decision.

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My assessment

6. Mrs B has requested a social care needs assessment for her daughter. The Council’s responsibility to assess derives from its duties set out in The Children Act. The Council says it has offered to carry out an assessment, as it is required to do, but Mrs B has declined to engage.
7. Mrs B complains that the assessment the Council has offered is not appropriate for her daughter’s needs and may therefore result in inadequate service provision. Rather than being assessed by a social worker as a child in need, she contends that the Council’s Specialist Community Disability Service (SCDS) should carry out the assessment. In her view an assessment by the SCDS is appropriate for her daughter’s needs and she regards the SCDS eligibility criteria as discriminatory.
8. Mrs B has made a formal complaint to the Council and complains that its response at Stage 2 of the complaint procedure was unreasonably delayed. The evidence shows that the Stage 2 response was issued in November 2021.
9. The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs B’s complaint. The Council is required to offer an assessment to Mrs B’s daughter. But it is for it to decide who carries it out. Mrs B may prefer to have the SCDS involved at this point, but that does not mean the Council has to agree. It is not for the Ombudsman to criticise the professional judgement of the Council’s officers on this matter.
10. It is also the case that the Council’s decision has not caused a demonstrable injustice to Mrs B. In advance of an assessment, it is impossible to say whether the outcome would meet Mrs B’s daughter’s needs. If Mrs B was unhappy with the result of the assessment, her recourse would be to make a formal complaint, which is likely to fall to be considered under the statutory process for complaints about children’s services.
11. I note that the Council says the assessment could result in referral to SCDS. Mrs B says the Council initially denied this was the case. She says the failure to tell her this was possible disadvantaged her because, with this information, she may have agreed to an assessment by the social worker. Given that we cannot speculate on the outcome of an assessment, we cannot find that this caused Mrs B an injustice.
12. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue. We will not therefore consider whether there was procedural fault in the way the Council considered Mrs B’s complaint.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is no evidence of fault causing injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman