Summary: Mrs X, who was a foster carer, complained about the Council’s failure to properly investigate her complaint about inaccurate statements made by a social worker. We have found the Council to be at fault because it failed to carry out a specific enquiry and failed to amend inaccurate records in response to her complaint. To remedy the injustice to Mrs X, the Council has agreed to apologise and correct the relevant records. We did not find fault with the Council’s decision to make a safeguarding referral to the private fostering agency.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains about the Council’s failure to properly investigate concerns she raised about the actions of a social worker when she was fostering children placed in her care.
2. In particular, she complains the social worker fabricated evidence that led to her being subject to an investigation by the private fostering agency she was employed by.
3. Mrs X says this has caused severe distress and forced her to give up fostering. This has had significant financial consequences for her.

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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 significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with an organisation’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)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I spoke to Mrs X and reviewed the information she provided, including a review carried out by an Independent Reviewing Officer on behalf of the private fostering agency.
7. I made enquiries with the Council and considered its response.
8. Mrs X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered their comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

Fostering

9. Children who are looked after by a council may be placed in foster care. Foster care arrangements may be short or long term.

Safeguarding

10. Under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, where a council has reasonable cause to suspect that a child in their area is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm, it has a duty to make such enquiries as it considers necessary to decide whether to take any action to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare. Such enquiries should be initiated where there are concerns about abuse or neglect.
11. Children in care have an Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) who is responsible for ensuring councils adhere to children’s care plans. The IROs’ Handbook 2011 sets out their duties to safeguard and promote a child’s best interests and monitor a council’s actions. IROs are qualified and experienced social workers.
12. In August 2018 the government introduced statutory guidance, ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’. The guidance provides a framework for organisations and agencies working with children and families to have clear policies for dealing with allegations against people who work with children. Policies should make a clear distinction between allegations, concerns about the quality of care or practice, or complaints. An allegation may be about a person who works with children who has:

• behaved in a way that has or may have harmed a child;
• possibly committed a criminal offence against or related to a child; and/or
• behaved towards a child or children in a way that suggests they may pose a risk of harm to children.

13. The Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) is a person responsible for managing and overseeing investigations into allegations that somebody who works with children has behaved in a way that may pose a risk to children.

What happened

14. I have set out below a summary of the key events. But it is not meant to show everything that happened.
15. Mrs X was employed by a private fostering agency (“the Agency”). She had many years of experience fostering children.
16. The Council placed four siblings with Mrs X who were the subject of interim care orders. A social worker employed by the Agency, Ms P, was responsible for supervising the placement. She liaised closely with children’s social worker, Officer J. As part of her fostering role, Mrs X was required to provide regular updates to the Council (either directly to Officer J or via Ms P) about the children’s behaviour and well-being.
17. Mrs X became concerned that information she had provided was not being reported accurately in official meetings and reports by Officer J. Most significantly, Officer J reported she had been told by Mrs X that the children had engaged in sexual activity and used a mobile phone inappropriately. Mrs X says this did not happen and she had been misquoted.
18. As a result, Mrs X says she felt her professionalism and ability to keep the children safe was being called into question.
19. Most importantly, she believed the children could be adversely affected by this incorrect information. She says she was pressurised by Officer J to include this information in court reports. She was concerned this could lead to the children being subjected to invasive medical assessments.
20. In light of this, Mrs X felt she had no choice but to end the placement.
21. The Council reported its concerns to Agency. The Agency carried out an investigation. As part of this, an IRO, acting in their role as the Agency’s Safeguarding Manager (as opposed to being employed by the Council) was asked to carry out an investigation.
22. This concluded that Mrs X was a fit and proper person to be a foster carer. Despite this endorsement, Mrs X says she no longer felt able to continue fostering. She lost her main source of income.
23. In November 2022, Mrs X complained to the Council about how she had been misrepresented by Officer J and lack of transparency about the allegations made against her. She said she wanted Officer J to be disciplined and for her to be compensated for her loss of income and distress.
24. Her complaint was not upheld at stage one of the Council’s complaints procedure. It said Officer J acted appropriately and in response to information about the children provided by Mrs X, some of which was later retracted. Dissatisfied with this outcome, Mrs X complained again. She submitted evidence to prove Officer J had been dishonest.
25. In response to her stage two complaint, the Council explained:

• it was not possible to verify certain disputed conversations. The Council could only report what was on the recording system;
• it was unclear what inaccurate information had been allegedly shared with other professionals by officer J;
• Mrs X should have raised concerns about lack of context surrounding her statements to the IRO at the time; and
• Incorrect dates and statements could be corrected.

26. Dissatisfied with this outcome, Mrs X brought her complaint to the Ombudsman. She was particularly concerned the Council had ignored the evidence submitted with her complaint.

Analysis

27. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.
28. In this context, I will consider Mrs X’s two areas of complaint below.

Report of concerns to the Agency

29. Mrs X is of the strongly held belief that the Council had no justification for raising concerns about her suitability as a foster carer with the Agency, particularly as she feels she was exonerated by the outcome. However, this does not necessarily mean the Council was at fault for making the referral.
30. As a preliminary point, it is disappointing the Council has failed to provide any contemporaneous records or explanation about its decision to make the referral to the Agency in response to my enquiries. Nor was this mentioned accurately in the Council’s complaint response. In this, the Council stated “it assumed” the retraction of information by Mrs X is what led to the investigation by the Agency. In fact, it was a referral made by the Council in January 2022 that prompted this.
31. The only reason I know what happened here is because an extract of the Council’s referral to the Agency was included in the IRO report. It was described as an incident report and listed six concerns that had been raised by the Council. This led to Mrs X being placed “on hold” as a foster carer and the Agency was advised by the LADO that it was a Code of Conduct issue.
32. By law the Council the has a duty to make enquiries and make referrals to other agencies if there is a potential risk to children. Taking into consideration the summary of concerns and the fact the referral was endorsed by the LADO, I am satisfied there was no fault by the Council when it made the referral to the Agency. It follows on from this that the Council cannot be held responsible for the distress suffered by Mrs X as a result of the investigations carried out by the Agency.

Complaint handling

33. The Ombudsman has produced guidance to councils setting out what complainants are entitled to expect when they make a complaint. We expect councils to, amongst other things, take account all the available facts and evidence.
34. In this case, the most significant piece of evidence in support of what Mrs X said was the final report carried out by the IRO on behalf of the Agency. I have read this report and it provides a detailed analysis of the comprehensive investigative work the IRO undertook to establish what happened, including a review of Mrs X’s contemporaneous fostering logs. It is not my role to comment on whether Officer J did or did not misrepresent Mrs X. However, I found the IRO’s evidence-based conclusions to be highly persuasive there may have been some substance to what Mrs X had said in her complaint about some of the matters she raised.
35. In response to an earlier draft of this decision statement, the Council has provided evidence that Mrs X did not send a copy of this report to the Council, despite her being invited, both verbally and in writing, to forward any evidence in support of her complaint. Nor has Mrs X has provided evidence she sent this document to the Council.
36. Because of this, I do not criticise the Council for not referencing it in its complaint response or expanding the scope of its complaint investigation to consider its findings. I acknowledge this meant the complaint response arguable failed to address some of the key issues raised by Mrs X, but I cannot hold the Council to be responsible for this. There was no fault here.
37. However, I have identified two inadequacies with the Council’s complaint response that amount to fault.
38. Firstly, there was some discrepancy about action taken by Officer J when, according to Mrs X, she was on sick leave (and Mrs X had text messages to prove this). Mrs X says this proves alleged incidents could not have taken place at this time and support her case. In its complaint response, the Council said it was not possible to confirm the exact dates Officer J was on sick leave. This is incorrect. The Council would personnel records available about this. It is more likely that Council was not inclined to make this enquiry. If this was indeed the case, it should have said so. Instead, it was disingenuous and said it was not possible. It is entirely understandable that this would leave Mrs X feeling that she was not being listened to and that her complaint was not being taken seriously.
39. Secondly, we also expect councils to be clear about what they will do to put things right if something has gone wrong. The Council accepted it was factually incorrect when it said the children had been removed from her care. It also accepted this had negative connotations. As far as I can see, the Council has taken no action to correct this mistake. Similarly, the Council accepted some dates may be incorrect and stated, “the dates recorded on the recording system can be reviewed”. Again, there is no information about what happened afterwards to address this issue. As a result, Mrs X has been left with uncertainty about whether incorrect information about her is still on record.
40. Overall, I am satisfied the Council acted with fault, that caused Mrs X some distress and frustration. I have made recommendations below to remedy this injustice.

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Agreed action

41. The Council has agreed to take the following action within four weeks from the date of my final decision.
1. Apologise in writing to Mrs X for the fault I have identified with its complaint handling.
2. Amend the relevant records to reflect the errors that have been accepted by the Council.
3. Reflect on the issues raised in this decision statement and identify any areas of service improvement in complaint handling, particularly around making appropriate enquiries where there is a conflict of evidence. The Council should prepare a short report setting out what the Council intends to do to ensure similar problems do not reoccur. This report should be sent to the Ombudsman.
42. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

43. have found the Council to have acted with fault and the Council has agreed with my recommendations to remedy the injustice to Mrs X. On this basis, I have completed my investigation.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman