Summary: We will not investigate Ms X complaint about the help and support her family receives for her child’s disabled needs. We are unlikely to achieve anything significantly more than the reassessment and apology the Councill has already offered.

The complaint

1. Ms X says her child, Y, is not getting their disabled needs met.

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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
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome; 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 Ms X and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Ms X says she made a request to the Council for urgent help and support for caring with Y’s needs. Ms X said the Council delayed for 16 weeks in replying. She said the delay added to an already stressful situation and the care offered of four hours a week was not enough.
6. The Council replied in March 2025 at stage one of its corporate complaints’ procedure and stage two in April 2025. It upheld Ms X’s complaint, apologised and arranged to start a reassessment of Y’s needs. The Council says Ms X has refused to engage with the assessment.
7. The law sets out a three-stage procedure for councils to follow when looking at complaints about children’s social care services. At stage two, councils appoint an investigating officer (IO) to look into the complaint and an independent person (IP) who is responsible for overseeing the investigation and ensuring its independence
8. If a complainant is unhappy with the outcome of the stage two investigation, they can ask for a stage three review by an independent panel.

Analysis

9. The Council should have used the children social care complaints’ procedure. We usually take the view that councils and complainants should complete that complaints’ procedure before we would consider this type of complaint. The likely outcome from a statutory complaints’ procedure in this case is that Y’s needs are reassessed. The Council has offered this. We could achieve no worthwhile outcome by asking the Council to complete the statutory complaints’ procedure or by our investigation. Neither are likely to add to the outcome of the corporate complaints’ procedure.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because there is no worthwhile outcome achievable.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman