Summary: The Council was not at fault for how it dealt with Mr B’s concerns about a foster child in his care, or for how it conducted his exit interview after he resigned as a foster carer. It was, however, at fault for how it dealt with his complaint. The Council has agreed to apologise to Mr B.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I refer to as Mr B, was a foster carer for a nine-year-old girl. I refer to the girl as X.
2. In early 2021, Mr B became concerned about X, and decided she posed a risk to his family. He informed the Council of this and asked for her to be moved elsewhere.
3. Mr B complains that:
• the Council did not move X for nine days – putting his children at risk – and failed to provide him with any support during that period, which meant he had to resign as a foster carer;
• after he resigned, the Council conducted an inaccurate exit interview, which is preventing him from finding work with a private fostering agency; and
• the Council took too long to respond to his complaints.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. 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)
5. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
6. 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)
7. 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

8. I spoke to Mr B about his complaint and considered information from Mr B and the Council.
9. I considered guidance set out in the Council’s procedures. I also considered the Ombudsman publication, ‘Guidance on good practice: remedies’.
10. Mr B and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

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What I found

What should have happened?

11. The Council’s online children’s services procedures say:

A foster carer may give written notice at any time of their wish to resign from the role. Once written notice has been given, their approval will automatically be terminated 28 days after receipt of the notice.

12. The procedures also say:

The foster carer cannot withdraw their notice once it has been received, nor can the Agency Decision Maker decline to accept the resignation. Should a foster carer who has resigned subsequently wish to foster again, they will need to be assessed under the procedure for Assessment and Approvals of Foster Carers Procedure.

13. The Council’s corporate complaints procedure says it will respond to both stages 1 and 2 complaints within 20 working days. However, if the issues are particularly complex, then within 20 working days it will tell the complainant when to expect a response.

What happened?

14. On 14 January 2021 X told Mr B that, when she had lived with her grandparents, she had made some false allegations about them. Mr B reported this to the Council and asked for a social worker to come and speak to X.
15. The following day, Mr B contacted the Council again. He said X had become angry at the prospect that she may have to leave his care. He said he was worried she would make false allegations about him as well. He gave 28 days’ notice on the placement.
16. Three days later – the following Monday – X’s social worker acknowledged that Mr B had given notice. She said she would visit X the next day. She also identified two potential new placements for X.
17. The following day, the Council held a placement meeting. It noted a new placement was needed by 12 February. It agreed that, in the meantime, X’s social worker would continue weekly visits, and Mr B’s fostering supervisor would do direct work with Mr B on child development. The supervisor would also seek support for Mr B from a regional support service.
18. Mr B’s supervisor also spoke separately to Mr B and his wife. She provided advice to them about the possible reasons for X’s behaviour. Mr B said he felt X had ‘psychopathic traits’. His supervisor disagreed.
19. Later that day, Mr B emailed the Council with numerous concerns about X, supported by internet research into psychological conditions. He described something he had found on X’s computer which, in his view, showed his daughter was at risk from X.
20. The Council’s records show that it felt Mr B’s email demonstrated a lack of understanding of children who have experienced trauma and abuse. It was also concerned that he had gone through X’s computer and onto the internet to find things which supported his view that she had psychopathic traits.
21. Mr B’s supervisor called him to discuss the email, and said he was not qualified to make a psychological diagnosis of X. She also said the risk from X had not changed, and X had never harmed other children. Mr B disagreed and said X should be moved as soon as possible.
22. After this, Mr B sent a further email to the Council, saying he and his wife were resigning as foster carers with immediate effect, and would not be serving a notice period. He, again, set out why he thought X had a ‘mental illness’ and was a risk to his family.
23. Mr B also submitted a formal complaint, saying that, despite numerous recent emails about the risk X posed to their children, she remained in his care. He said his children were having to stay with family, and he was barely sleeping because of the situation. He said nobody from the Council had provided any support or given him any advice, and nobody had spoken to X for almost a week. He said the Council had told him she could not be moved.
24. The following day Mr B’s supervisor emailed Mr B to let him know that X’s meeting with her new prospective foster carers had gone well. Mr B sent a further email, this time to the Director of Children’s Services, again suggesting X had ‘psychopathic tendencies’ or an ‘extreme personality disorder’. He also told X’s social worker he had been through X’s diary and taken photographs of things he thought were of concern.
25. X moved to a new placement the next day.
26. Shortly after this, Mr B held a conversation with his supervisor in which he said he did not think moving X was the best outcome. He said he wanted significant support and changes to the fostering system and, if these changes were made, he would consider retracting his notice. His supervisor noted that he had asked that X be removed from his care immediately.
27. In early February the Council held Mr B’s exit interview. Mr B’s supervisor’s manager – who conducted the interview – noted concerns that, despite having had time to reflect, Mr B remained ‘fixated’ on X being a risk to his family. She also noted a lack of emotional warmth from Mr B when talking about X. She recorded that, in her view, his resignation was appropriate, as any child placed with him in future could also display challenging behaviour and could face stigma as a result.
28. In mid-February the Council responded to Mr B’s formal complaint. The response did not address any of the issues he raised – it simply referred to support the Council was providing to X since her move. Mr B asked to escalate the complaint to stage 2.
29. Shortly after this, Mr B’s supervisor’s manager called Mr B and discussed his concerns. Mr B said he was not happy with the record of his exit interview. The manager said the record was her professional views. She said that, should the Council receive any reference requests from private fostering agencies for Mr B in future, the Council would provide a fair and accurate reference.
30. Mr B remained dissatisfied, and told the manager he had drafted an ‘agreement’ for the Council. This agreement placed a series of demands on the Council which it had to meet before Mr B would consider returning as a foster carer. He said that, if the Council did not sign up to this agreement, he would escalate his complaint. The manager told him the Council would consider his request.
31. In early March, Mr B made a separate complaint about the record of his exit interview, saying it was full of inaccuracies.
32. Shortly after this, the Council responded to Mr B’s request that it sign up to the ‘agreement’ he had drafted. It refused. It said that, if he wanted to return as a foster carer, he would be subject to a reassessment.
33. In mid-March the Council asked Mr B for more information about his complaints. He responded, and provided information only about his dissatisfaction with the Council’s exit interview.
34. At the end of July the Council sent Mr B its stage 2 complaint response. This dealt solely with the complaint Mr B raised in March about his exit interview. It did not review his earlier stage 1 complaint about the events preceding X’s placement move.

My findings

35. I will set out my findings for each part of Mr B’s complaint in turn.

The Council’s failure to move X quickly enough after Mr B reported the risk she posed to his family

36. The only formal timescale in which the Council needs to move a looked-after child after their foster carer gives notice is 28 days. However, if there is a risk to or from the child, the Council must consider this and act without delay.
37. The Council considered all the information Mr B provided about X shortly after receiving it. It decided X posed no significant risk to Mr B’s children, and it properly explained its reasons. This was the professional judgment of two different social workers.
38. I cannot question a professional’s judgment unless there was fault in how a decision was reached.
39. The Council properly considered Mr B’s views, and fully explained and recorded why it did not agree with him. Its decision about the potential risk from X does not appear obviously unreasonable. So I cannot question it.
40. As the Council decided the level of risk from X did not justify an immediate move, there was no need for an immediate move to take place.
41. The Council did cut short X’s placement move process, but only because Mr B refused to have her in his care any longer. So the Council only took two days to move X after identifying a new placement – four days in total after Mr B handed in his notice.
42. This means there was no delay in removing X from Mr B’s care, and no fault by the Council.

The Council’s failure to provide Mr B with support after he reported concerns about X

43. The Council’s records describe a series of ways in which it offered support to
    Mr B.
44. Mr B’s fostering supervisor spoke to him about his concerns on multiple occasions, attended a placement meeting in which she agreed to provide specific further support and training, and provided advice over the telephone and by email. She did not agree with Mr B’s internet diagnosis of X – but that is not the same thing as failing in her duty to provide support to him as a foster carer.
45. No training was actually delivered, because Mr B resigned. But it would not have been reasonable to expect the Council to do any more in the time it had available.
46. After Mr B handed his notice in, the Council’s procedures say it could not cancel the process. Although Mr B subsequently decided he might want to continue fostering, the Council was correct to tell him he would need to be subject to reassessment.
47. Because of the above, I have found no fault with how the Council provided support to Mr B.

The Council’s exit interview

48. There is a large amount of professional analysis in the record of Mr B’s exit interview record – which is not unreasonable in such a situation – and, as I have said above, I cannot question a professional’s judgment unless there was fault in how a decision was reached.
49. I have seen no evidence that the views given by the manager in Mr B’s interview are unsupported by the Council’s records, and there is nothing significant in the interview record which appears to be unquestionably inaccurate.
50. Because of this, I have no power to question the manager’s professional judgment, or substitute hers for my own (or Mr B’s). She has recorded her views, and I am satisfied that those views were drawn from her interpretation of events. This was not fault by the Council.

The Council’s complaint responses

51. The Council responded to Mr B’s first complaint in 18 working days, so there was no delay. But its response did not in any way address the issues he raised. This was fault.
52. Mr B made a stage 2 complaint in mid-February, then, a couple of weeks later, made a separate complaint (about his exit interview). The Council did not ask him for more information about his complaints until mid-March, then issued a single response – under stage 2 of its procedure – in late July (112 working days after the stage 2 complaint). This response only addressed the complaint about the exit interview, and not the earlier complaint which had been answered at stage 1.
53. The Council was at fault for the stage 2 delay, and for failing to answer Mr B’s original complaint properly at either stages 1 or 2.
54. Mr B experienced no significant injustice from the poor-quality complaint responses, because the Council had already gone to significant lengths to set out its views on his concerns (which he had raised multiple times, verbally and by email, before making the formal complaint). It seems unlikely – based on the Council’s records, and its response to my enquiries – that better complaint responses would have led to a significant shift in the Council’s position.
55. However, the delay to the stage 2 response did cause Mr B an injustice. It is likely that he experienced avoidable distress from the delay. The Council should take action to remedy this.

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Agreed action

56. The Council has agreed to apologise to Mr B for its failure to properly respond to his complaints, and for its failure to respond within the timescales required by its own procedure.
57. The Council has agreed to complete this action within six weeks of this decision.

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Final decision

58. The Council was not at fault for how it dealt with Mr B’s concerns about X, or for how it conducted his exit interview after he resigned as a foster carer. It was, however, at fault for how it dealt with his complaint. The agreed action remedies Mr B’s injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman