Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint about the failure of the Council’s children’s services to respond to the complainant, and to provide him with regular updates regarding the well-being of his son. This is because any fault did not cause significant injustice to the complainant, and there is nothing we could add to the Council’s response.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to here as Mr D, says that the Council:
• Has failed to respond to his communications; and
• Has not provided him, as agreed, with regular updates about the progress and well-being of his son, who resides with his mother.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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 we would find fault causing injustice which is significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information provided by Mr B and I sent him a draft decision for his comments.

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What I found

4. Mr B’s son resides with his mother, and Mr B has raised a number of issues with the Council regarding its involvement with the family. These issues include delay on a Section 37 report, lack of contact with his son and the failure of the Council to ensure that Child in Need meetings take place.
5. Mr B says that in addition to these issues, the Council does not respond to his communications, and does not report his son’s progress and well-being to him on a regular basis. This is the complaint that Mr B has made to the Ombudsman.
6. The Council has responded to the complaint. It says that it has been unable to provide the information updates as agreed because the social worker was unavailable for some time, and because Mr B’s ex-partner is now unwilling to work with the Council or to provide updates. It upheld the complaint on these issues for those reasons, and has undertaken to improve its training and procedures.
7. The Council further says that Mr B’s expectations in respect of social worker contact with him, are unrealistic. It has explained the level and means of communication that it is prepared to provide. Although Mr B says that he feels social workers should be expected to respond to emails and phone messages, the Council is entitled to establish a limit to the number and means of contacts.
8. There is nothing further that we could add to these responses through additional investigation.

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Final decision

9. I will not investigate this complaint. This is because we cannot add any value to the previous investigation and response by the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman