Summary: Ms X complained the Council regularly changed or cancelled contact arrangements with two of her children, Y and Z, who are in foster placements, causing her distress. The Council was at fault when it cancelled two visits at short notice and failed to keep accurate records. It should apologise to Ms X and review its procedures for recording Ms X’s contact sessions with her children.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains the Council regularly changed or cancelled contact arrangements with two of her children, Y and Z, who are in foster placements.
2. Ms X says this caused unnecessary distress for her and other family members.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)
5. Under the information sharing agreement between the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), we will share this decision with Ofsted.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I spoke to Ms X and considered her view of her complaint.
7. I made enquiries of the Council and considered the information it provided.
8. I wrote to Ms X and the Council with my draft decision and considered their comments before I made my final decision.

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What I found

9. Ms X’s two children, Y and Z are in foster placements. Ms X also has two older children, who are now adults and a younger one who does not live with her.
10. The Council has contact arrangements in place in relation to Y and Z. Ms X should see them four times a year. In addition, there should also be two contact sessions with the whole family.
11. Ms X originally complained in October 2018 about these contact arrangements. She was unhappy that some of the sessions were either being cancelled by the Council or they were organised at short notice.
12. The Council responded at stage 1 of its complaints process in December 2018. Ms X was unhappy and in February 2019 she asked for her complaint to be escalated to stage 2 of the procedures. At this stage, Ms X’s complaints were that:
• the Council delayed in dealing with her stage 1 complaint;
• despite assuring her that contact with her children would improve, the Council failed to telephone her to make arrangements for the next contact session which should have taken place in December 2018/January 2019;
• contact sessions had been missed and the time not made up;
• the Council failed to give sufficient notice to the family to enable them all to meet up because of work commitments; and
• the Council had failed to provide her with copies of the contact session notes.
13. The Council carried out an investigation. It upheld all of Ms X’s complaints and recommended that:
1. the relevant service area receive complaints handling training;
2. Ms X’s complaint and the issues arising from it were raised and discussed in team meetings;
3. senior managers carried out a lessons learnt meeting to discuss the effect of poor communication and failure to act on agreed actions on service users such as Ms X; and
4. an action plan was drawn up, ensuing contact with Y and Z was a priority.
14. The Council wrote to Ms X in May 2019 with the outcome of its investigation and the recommendations. The officer said “I was very concerned to read the detail of the poor customer journey you have experienced… I would like to… extend my own apologies for the difficulties you have encountered when working with the Council; this is not acceptable and falls well short of the levels of care we expect of operational staff”.
15. In October 2019, Ms X complained to the Ombudsman. She said that despite the stage 2 investigation and recommendations, contact with Y and Z remained poor. She said this was largely due to the Council’s contact team which would cancel contact at short notice. Ms X gave a recent example of when contact had been scheduled but the contact supervisor had pulled out because “it would take an hour to get there”. Ms X said contact was then arranged for the following week. She said the contact supervisor cancelled 15 minutes before contact was due to start.
16. In response to my enquiries the Council provided details of the contact sessions for 2018/19. These showed three visits took place in 2018 and five visits took place in 2019. Its records showed that two sessions had been cancelled; in October 2018, when Ms X had cancelled the session and March 2019 when the contact officer had cancelled. The notes did not explain the reasons for the cancellations.

My findings

17. During the complaints process, the Council admitted it had acted with fault, resulting in missed sessions with Y and Z through no fault of Ms X. It apologised and said matters would improve. Ms X says that there are still problems with the Council’s organisation of the sessions.
18. The Council’s records indicate it only cancelled one session, in March 2019. However, despite the fact the Council’s records do not reflect this, I have no reason to doubt Ms X’s claim that the October 2019 arrangements were also changed twice at short notice which caused her inconvenience. I would expect the Council to keep accurate records. Its failure to do so is fault. As a result, Ms X was caused inconvenience and frustration.

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Agreed actions

19. Within one month of the date of the final decision the Council has agreed to apologise to Ms X and her family for the short notice cancellation of the contact sessions in October 2019.
20. Within three months of the date of the final decision, the Council had agreed to review its procedures to ensure contact sessions with Ms X and her children are accurately recorded, showing all cancellations and the reasons why.

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Final decision

21. There was fault leading to injustice. The Council has agreed to my recommendations. Therefore, I have completed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman