Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about children services actions. There is nothing significant we could add to the Council’s response to his complaint.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, complains about various children services actions.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)
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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered the information Mr X provided with his complaint and the Council’s responses which it provided. Mr X had the opportunity to comment on a draft version of this decision.

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What I found

5. Four of Mr X’s grandchildren live with him. The children moved to his home in August 2018. The Court made a full Care Order to the Council in December 2018. The Care Plan attached to the Care Order set out that Mr X would care for the children.
6. We are considering a separate complaint from Mr X about his housing between August 2018 and March 2020. He had argued the house was too small for the family. The family have now moved to a larger property.
7. This complaint is about other issues which he complained to the Council about. The Council considered his complaint within its Children Act complaints procedure which finished in early 2020.
8. The law sets out a three stage procedure for councils to follow when looking at complaints about children’s social care services. At stage 2 of this procedure, the Council appoints an Investigating Officer and an Independent Person (who is responsible for overseeing the investigation). If a complainant is unhappy with the outcome of the stage 2 investigation, they can ask for a stage 3 review. If a council has investigated something under this procedure, the Ombudsman would not normally re-investigate it unless we consider that investigation was flawed. However, we may look at whether a council properly considered the findings and recommendations of the independent investigation.
9. The elements of Mr X complaint which are not directly about the housing complaint and my analysis on each is:
1. Mr X says the Council did not consider the children’s wishes and feelings properly when setting contact between the children and their mother. The Court approved care plan set out contact. We cannot investigate this. The children were represented in the proceedings separately.
2. Mr X says the Council still needed the children to attend contact even though the eldest child had displayed behaviours which suggested it was harming them. The Council say the elder child is no longer attending contact. There is nothing further we could usefully achieve on this aspect of his complaint.
3. Mr X believes he had not been provided with all the background health records needed and nor had relevant health professionals involved with the children. The Council at stage two of the complaints process agreed to set up a meeting. At stage three it said a baseline healthcare assessment would provide the starting point going forward. There is nothing more significant we could achieve on this.
4. Mr X says the Council’s communication has been of a poor standard. He does not feel he has received adequate information, has not been kept informed and the Council has not promoted a partnership relationship. Much of this complaint is not separable from the housing complaint. Any injustice arising from the effect of poor communication is covered above.

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Final decision

10. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is nothing significant further we could achieve.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman