Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s delay in applying to discharge a care order for her children. We could not add to the Council’s investigation and responses under all three stages of the statutory complaints process.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains the Council unnecessarily delayed applying to discharge the care order for her children. She believes the Council’s consideration of her complaints about its handling failed to fully appreciate the consequences and impact on her and her children. She feels the remedy payment the Council has offered for the delay is nominal and insulting. She wants the Ombudsman to reinvestigate her concerns.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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:

• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or
• 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

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. 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.
6. However, we may look at whether there were any flaws in the stage two investigation or stage three review panel that could call the findings into question.
7. The Council completed its consideration of Mrs X’s complaints under stage three of the statutory complaint process in April 2024. This included the panel discussing Mrs X’s concern that the summary of her complaint at stage two did not fully articulate the nuances of the issues she wished to raise.
8. The Stage Three Review Panel altered the findings for two complaint elements – one to upheld from partially upheld and another from not upheld to partially upheld. The Panel also recommended a remedy payment of £500 to Mrs X in recognition of injustice caused by the Council’s delay in applying for discharge of the care order for Mrs X’s children. I understand the care order was eventually discharged by the court in May 2024.
9. The Council has responded to Mrs X’s complaints in detail and upheld them in part. It has accepted the stage two and stage three Panel’s recommendations to improve its service in future. The remedy payment the Panel recommended, and the Council agreed, to offer Mrs X is in line with the amount we would typically recommend in such cases. We will not normally investigate a complaint which has already been through all stages of the statutory process. It is not a good use of public money to do so. In this case, the question for us is whether our intervention would add anything to the investigation the Council has carried out. There is nothing to suggest that it would do so.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because further investigation could not add to the Council’s responses.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman