Summary: Mrs X complained that the Council failed to provide adequate support to her when she looked after a child who was in need. The Council was not at fault in the way decided it was a private fostering arrangement or in the way it dealt with Mrs X’s requests for financial support.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complained that the Council failed to provide adequate support to her when she looked after a child, C, and instead treated it as a private fostering arrangement.
2. She says this has disadvantaged her own family, both financially and emotionally.

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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 cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1), 26A(1) and 34(3), as amended)
4. 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)
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)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I discussed the complaint with Mrs X and considered the information she provided. I considered the information the Council provided in response to my enquiries. I considered relevant law and guidance on friends and family care. I sent a draft version of this decision to both parties and invited comments. I have considered the comments received in reaching this final decision.

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What I found

7. Private fostering is an arrangement made privately, without the involvement of the local authority, where a child under the age of 16 (or up to 18 if disabled) lives with someone not closely related to them for at least 28 days. In such cases the child’s parents keep parental responsibility and remain responsible for any financial support the child might need. However local authorities have a duty to satisfy themselves that the welfare of the child is being properly safeguarded and promoted.
8. Councils’ duties in relation to private fostering arrangements are set out in the Children (Private Arrangements for Fostering) Regulations 2005 and the statutory ‘Guidance on Private Fostering’. They include the following.

• Where the council receives notice that a person proposes to or is already privately fostering a child it must visit the carer and assess if they are suitable to care for the child and if the arrangements are suitable. It must establish the wishes and feeling of the child about the arrangement and speak to the parents or other people with parental responsibility.
• The council must arrange to visit the child regularly.
• The council has the same duty to carry out a child in need assessment as for other children in its area. This is an opportunity to consider whether extra support can help the private foster carer better meet the child’s needs.

What happened

9. In November 2017, C, who was 15, went to live with Mrs X and her family. He was a friend of Mrs X’s daughter and had close ties to the family for a number of years. At the time he was going through a difficult time and engaging in anti-social activities. He was not attending school. C’s mother agreed he could go and live with Mrs X and her family in the hope they would be able to establish better boundaries.
10. That same day, Mrs X told the Council about the arrangement. A social worker from the Council’s Private Fostering Team started an assessment.
11. As C was out of school the Council was involved in trying to find alternative educational provision. Mrs X says she spent a lot of time dealing with this and she received little support from the Council. She also attended a number of health appointments with C and arranged counselling to help him understand his behaviour and move towards a making better life choices.
12. C’s mother made occasional payments to Mrs X. His father did not contribute. Mrs X made successful claims for tax credits and child benefit.
13. Mrs X says the financial strain on her family finances was great. Mrs X says her food bill increased significantly. A downstairs reception room had been turned into a bedroom for C.
14. In June 2017, the arrangement ended and C returned to live with his mother.
15. Mrs X complained to the Council about the lack of support and its failure to treat C as a child in need. She says the Council should have acted sooner to offer him support. She says it is unfair that she has lost out financially because of this. She only felt obliged to help C because everyone else, including the Council, had failed him.

Analysis

16. The key question is the extent to which the Council was involved in the arrangement for Mrs X to look after C. If the Council had been involved with this, it should then have treated Mrs X as a family and friends foster carer and she would have been eligible for a payment equivalent to a fostering allowance. This is what Mrs X feels she is entitled to.
17. In this case, however, the evidence I have seen from the case records supports the conclusion that the Council was not involved in the arrangement for Mrs X to start caring for C at her home. Mrs X does not dispute this.
18. Given the information the Council received during the assessment I do not find it was at fault in deciding to treat the situation as a private fostering arrangement. This meant C’s parents were responsible for providing financial support to Mrs X as their son’s carer. The case records show this was explained to Mrs X at the outset. She was also told she should apply for benefits, which she did. The Council made it clear financial responsibility for C still lay with his parents. While it is unfortunate C’s parents did not contribute enough, this was not due to fault by the Council.
19. In addition, the Council had a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of C and consider whether it needed to provide any further support under section 17. I am satisfied the Council did so although I acknowledge Mrs X’s strongly held view that it was totally inadequate.
20. There is evidence that the Council considered Mrs X’s requests for financial support. The social worker carried out the statutory private fostering visits as required and was satisfied that Mrs X was providing good care for C. Mrs X raised the question of financial support during these visits. The Council advised her about the benefit income she could receive if she applied for tax credits and child benefit. It also responded to her requests for support by making regular payments to cover counselling costs and club fees. It discussed the possibility of longer-term financial support if she were to apply for a Special Guardianship Order.
21. The records also show the Council was involved in supporting C to return to education or training.
22. The decision about how much support to provide is a matter of discretion for the Council. It is not for the Ombudsman to say how much financial support Mrs X should have received as long as the Council has considered the matter properly. I do not find fault in the way the Council responded to her requests.
23. Mrs X had a firm opinion that C should have been classed as a child in need (as defined in section 17 of the Children Act 1989) at an earlier stage as well as when she was providing him with a home. According to Mrs X, C’s former headteacher was of the opinion he should have been “picked up by the system” sooner.
24. The Council carried out an assessment and formed a professional judgement about whether C was a child in need of services. This was a decision for the Council to make and it is not the role of the Ombudsman to interfere with this professional judgement as long as the correct process was followed. I am satisfied it was in this case.

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Final decision

25. I do not consider the Council was at fault in treating Mrs X’s care of C as a private fostering arrangement or in the way it responded to her requests for financial support.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman