Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council dealt with Mr X’s foster care matter. This is because the Council has dealt with the complaint through the Statutory Complaints Procedure and there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by a further investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about a decision the Council made to end a foster care placement in late 2024, and the way it went about it.
2. Mr X says the Council caused distress, financial loss and caused him to question his role as a foster carer. He is seeking a meeting to discuss what he says happened and wants the Council to admit to lying.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
4. 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 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

5. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. Mr X complained to the Council in November 2024, about a foster care placement it ended in October 2024. The Council has completed the statutory children’s complaints procedure, which upheld some issues raised and made four recommendations.
8. In accordance with those recommendations, the Council has apologised, it has considered whether to carry out a Disruption Meeting, considered whether a face-to-face meeting should be held, and agreed to discuss maintaining contact with the children.
9. Mr X remained dissatisfied and brought his complaint to the Ombudsman in December 2025.
10. The statutory children’s complaints procedure was set up to provide children, young people and those involved in their welfare with access to an independent, thorough and prompt response to their concerns. Because of this, if a council has investigated something under the statutory children’s complaint process, the Ombudsman would not normally re-investigate it.
11. On considering the process followed by the Council, there appears to be a short delay in completion of stage two.
12. The Council issued a stage two response within the expected timelines, however Mr X pointed out that it had not addressed all the issues raised.
13. The Council’s further stage two response is outside the expected timescales. However, the delay was relatively short (11 working days), and it did not change the overall outcome. The two additional points were considered to be inconclusive.
14. The stage one and three responses were provided as we would expect to see.
15. Any outcome we would achieve by investigating this further would not justify an investigation. We would not now investigate the Council’s decision and actions of October 2024 as they are late and have already been through an independent investigation.

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Final decision

16. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because we would not achieve a worthwhile outcome by doing so.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman