Summary: St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council properly took the action it agreed to as a result of its findings when it completed its consideration of Ms B’s complaint under the children’s statutory complaints procedure. However, it should offer a higher payment to recognise the impact of those faults on Ms B.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Ms B, complains that the Council failed to take the action agreed at the end of its consideration at stage 3 of the statutory children’s complaints procedure in April 2021 and to offer her a reasonable remedy to recognise the impact of its failings on her and her children. Most of Ms B’s complaint was upheld.
2. Ms B says the faults caused her avoidable distress.

Back to top

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. 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 Independent Investigator 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 he considers the investigation was flawed. However, he may look at whether a council properly considered the findings and recommendations of the independent investigation.
5. 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)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

6. I considered the written information Ms B provided with her complaint and discussed her complaint with her. I made written enquiries of the council land considered all the information before reaching a draft decision.
7. Ms B and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.
8. 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.

Back to top

What I found

What should have happened

9. Under the Children Act 1989 a child is “in need” if they are unlikely to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision of services by the council or if their health or development is likely to be significantly or further impaired without such services. A child in need plan details what support is being provided by a council to a child in need. The plan is reviewed periodically.
10. The statutory children’s complaints procedure requires stage 2 investigations to be completed in 25 working days up to a maximum of 65 working days only if necessary.

Background

11. Ms B left a violent relationship in 2018. Her children remained living with their father who was Ms B’s partner in the violent relationship she left. The children’s father initially facilitated face to face and telephone contact between Ms B and her children. But, over a period of time, he started to prevent her children from having contact with her. Private legal proceedings were underway in 2019 with Ms B’s former partner obtaining a court order to prevent Ms B removing the children from his care. In September 2019 the children were made the subjects of child in need plans. The private legal proceedings referred to Ms B having indirect contact with her children and Ms B is reported to have written to the children monthly between September 2019 and January 2020 and fortnightly from January to April 2020 though these letters were not passed on to the children by the social worker at the time.

The timescale for dealing with Ms B’s complaint

12. Ms B submitted her complaint at stage 1 of the complaints procedure in early February 2020. The response was provided around mid-March. Ms B asked or the matter to progress to stage 2 and the investigator for that was appointed in March 2020. The stage 2 report was issued in October 2020. In her report the stage 2 investigator said delays in completing the stage 2 were due to a combination of reasons including delays in the Council providing information and being available for her to interview. She was also unwell and on holiday during the period of her involvement. The stage 2 adjudication was issued in November 2020.
13. The stage 3 panel took place in March 2021 and the final adjudication took place in April 2021. Ms B asked for the stage 3 panel to be arranged around mid-January 2021.

Details of Ms B’s complaint

14. The complaint considered at stage 2 of the statutory children’s complaints procedure upheld the following complaints:
• social workers failed to listen to Ms B’s concerns about the emotional wellbeing of her children;
• social workers failed to listen to her concerns that her children had been prevented by their father from seeing their maternal relatives or to encourage the children to remain in contact with their maternal relatives;
• the Council delayed unacceptably in providing letters she wrote to the children as detailed in a court order; and
• Ms B had struggled to be heard in child in need meetings and was initially excluded from these meetings.
15. Two complaints were not upheld:
• social workers failed to take seriously Ms B’s 13 year history of domestic abuse perpetrated by the father of her children. I understand that the investigator’s decision on this part of the complaint was changed so that it was partially upheld by the time of the stage 3 review panel; and
• social workers had failed to prevent the children’s father being present during their counselling sessions.
16. One further complaint was considered not resolvable: that a social worker was rude to Ms B on the phone and said she did not have to speak to Ms B as the children live with their father.
17. The Head of Service who completed the stage 2 adjudication agreed with the stage 2 investigator’s findings.
18. Ms B remained dissatisfied and asked for the complaint to be considered by a review panel at stage 3 of the complaints procedure. The review panel also upheld the four fully upheld complaints, agreed the complaint the investigator changed her mind about should also be upheld. The panel also recommended that the complaint about the children’s father being present for the children’s counselling should be partially upheld.
19. In addition the panel also noted that:
• the complaint investigation took seven months to complete; and
• the Council did not progress contact for Ms B with her children as it should have done and should remind social workers about the effect of domestic abuse on families.
20. The Council’s Director of Children’s Services wrote to Ms B in April 2021 with his consideration of the recommendations of the recent stage 3 review panel that considered Ms B’s complaint. He accepted the Panel’s findings and recommendations.
21. The recommendations of the panel were the Council would:
• make a payment to recognise the time and trouble caused to Ms B in pursuing her complaint which had been delayed under the statutory children’s complaints process;
• arrange a meeting for Ms B with the Head of Service, and with the team manager and the social worker to consider the review panel’s findings and produce a written communication plan to be reviewed in 6 weeks;
• issue an apology for the delay in resolving issues that Ms B had complained about including the delay in providing her children with letters she had written to them, arranging contact between Ms B’s relatives and her children, poor communication and the poor professional relationship between the social work team and Ms B. I particularly note the information in the panel report relating to the letters that Ms B had sent to her children. These notes say that Ms B had written 39 letters to each of her children but they had received only four of them though the social worker had told Ms B they had been passed on and it was only as a result of the court hearing that she discovered this was not true;
• the Council should promote the children’s relationship with Ms B’s extended family.
22. The payment the Council offered in that April letter was £500 for Ms B and £100 for each of her children. In response to my enquiries on this complaint the Council sys it based this offer on a recent decision reached by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and that the payment offered was to recognise the impact of the delays, time and trouble and distress caused by the faults identified in the complaint. That letter also included an apology for the identified faults.
23. He also said that he understood Ms B had started having contact with her children and that work was on course to try to increase this.

Action the Council has taken since the stage 3 outcome

24. The Head of Service attended the stage 3 review panel and she met with the social worker and the team manager following the panel meeting to tell them the outcome of that meeting. The outcome of that discussion included:
• the head of service would meet Ms B to discuss how to improve communication;
• the social worker would provide Ms B with a weekly update;
• a Child In Need meeting would take place to discuss the counselling of the children as this related to the presence of their father in these counselling sessions;
• a meeting would be arranged with the maternal family members; and
• the social worker would go through Ms B’s letters to her children with them and place copies in a scrapbook for each of the children and place copies of file in case they ever got lost.
25. The case notes confirm that the Head of Service spoke to Ms B in March following the stage 3 panel meeting. The case notes demonstrate there was regular contact between Ms B and the children’s services team. Most notably a conversation with the Head of Service in mid-April when the court directed fortnightly contact for Ms B and detailing arrangements for the Council to help with this contact. There was further contact between the Head of Service and Ms B about contact arrangements later that month and this related to progression of contact and the legal proceedings for which the Council had ben asked to make recommendations and produce a report. There was further correspondence between them in the summer of 2021 around the arrangements being discussed in court about the living arrangements for the children.
26. A Child in Need meeting took place very shortly after the Head of Service spoke to Ms B in March. The notes of that meeting seem to record that a decision was reached that counselling was not required following the reintroduction of Ms B;s contact with her children and that all attendees of the meeting agreed that. I therefore assume that no further discussion was required on the concerns about the presence of the children’s father in such sessions.
27. The Council says that the social worker provided weekly updates on the children when Ms B did not have contact with the children during the week, other sessions which involved direct contact between the children and Ms B. The social worker did not also provide a weekly update when there was a child in need meeting as these discussions provided updates.
28. The Council has provided a lot of detail about how and when Ms B’s contact with the children increased gradually from supervised contact to unsupervised then overnight contact and said that as this progressed Ms B was advised that her family could see the children whilst they were staying with Ms B. This is also covered in detail in the CIN meeting notes. I note that the CIN notes confirm that the children had a two hour contact with Ms B’s extended family in April, that this went well and the children were keen for further similar contacts in future. The CIN meeting notes from May note that the plan was for the children to have monthly contact with the maternal extended family at a weekend when they were seeing Ms B.
29. The Council says its involvement ended in September 2021.

Was the Council at fault and did this cause injustice?

30. It is clear that the Head of Service spoke to Ms B and to the social worker and the social work team manager very promptly following the stage 3 review panel and that as a result of this a plan was drawn up.
31. The stage 3 adjudicator formally apologised to Ms B for those parts of the complaint that were upheld and where the Council’s actions had therefore fallen short.
32. I am unclear whether the Council actively promoted the children’s contact with their maternal family following the upheld complaint that social workers had failed to deal with Ms B’s concerns that the children’s father was preventing this. However, I recognise that Ms B’s contact with her children gradually increased from March 2021 and that the court was involved in the decision making around this. I cannot comment on the decision of the court but do note that the Council was involved in these sessions. I also note that the Council says that Ms B’s extended family was free to have contact with Ms B’s children as their contact with their mother increased and this sounds a sensible way of approaching this. It is not my role to reach a decision on what was appropriate for the children in terms of their contact with Ms B’s family. But it seems probable that the process needed to be managed carefully and slowly given the extended period that they had not had contact with Ms B and that the contact with Ms B’s family was gradually introduced in a way that met their overall needs.
33. I consider the Council’s actions following the stage 3 panel have been undertaken properly and find no fault in relation to this part of the complaint.
34. However, I do not consider the payment offered to recognise the impact of the identified faults is sufficient. I recognise that the Council says it based its calculation on a decision on another case issued by the Ombudsman’s office. However, I have taken a different approach to calculating an appropriate payment which is based on our Guidance on Remedies document. I will detail this further below.

Back to top

Agreed action

35. To recognise the personal injustice caused to Ms B as a result of the identified faults, the Council will, within one month of the date of the final decision on this complaint:
• make a payment of £250 to recognise the frustration caused by the delay in the Council’s handling of Ms B’s complaint;
• make a further payment of £250 to recognise the distress and frustration caused by the Council’s failure to respond adequately to Ms B’s concerns about the children’s contact with their maternal family and its failures to properly address her concerns about her children’s emotional wellbeing; and
• make another payment of £1000 to recognise the distress, outrage and lost opportunity caused by the Council’s failure to pass on Ms B letters to her children and incorrectly telling her that that had been done. This recommendation is at the higher end of the sums we usually recommend in such circumstances and reflects the high degree of distress and outrage the Councils actions in handling these letters caused her.
36. I consider the apologies already issued at the stage 2 and 3 adjudications are sufficient and that no further apology is required.
37. I did not specifically consider a complaint on behalf of the children. However, Ms B asked that I consider a remedy for the injustice they were caused by the restrictions in their contact as a result of the faults identified. The Council had previously offered a remedy for the children in the form of a payment of £100 for each. I did not consider that I had enough information about the individual impact on each of Ms B’s children to confidently put forward a remedy for each child. However, I accept that the loss of written contact during the period identified must have affected the children even if that is simply the lost opportunity to have that contact. In order to provide an opportunity for the children to make up for some of that lost contact the Council agreed that it would pay up to £300 to enable Ms B to take part in an activity with the children or a day out of them. However, Ms B says she is currently pregnant and cannot therefore manage a day trip with the children at the moment. The Council will, as it previously offered, revert to a payment of £100 for each of the three children who lost out on letterbox contact to recognise the injustice this caused them.
38. I am not clear if the Council has already paid the amount it offered as a remedy at the end of the stage 3 but if so it may subtract the £500 for Ms B from the amount agreed above.
39. I note that the panel recommended that the social workers should be reminded of the significance of domestic violence and the effect it has on families. The Council will provide evidence that it acted on this recommendation within a month of the final decision on this complaint.

Back to top

Final decision

40. The Council took the action it agreed to following the completion of all three stages of the children’s statutory complaints procedure. However, it will make a higher payment to recognise the impact of those faults on Ms B.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman