Suffolk County Council (21 014 639)
Category : Children's care services > Other
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 26 Jan 2022
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a failure to support Miss X after she gave birth to a child when she was 14. The complaint is late and there is no good reason to exercise discretion to consider it now.
The complaint
- Miss X said the Council failed to support her after she gave birth to a child when she was 14.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- We may exercise discretion to consider a latter complaint if we think it is not reasonable for a person to have approached us sooner. Where a person does not know about a matter, they cannot be expected to complain about it. And a person might have been prevented from complaining sooner. That is particularly so where the complaint is of child sexual abuse by an adult, where the person complaining has often been coerced into silence by the abuser.
- I do not doubt that Miss X feels the effects of what happened after her child’s birth very strongly. Given Miss X was 14 when she gave birth, we would not expect her to have fully understood the Council’s duties at that time. And she would also have been in a vulnerable position and thus unable to complain owing to her age and lack of maturity. Had she complained within a few years of becoming an adult, there would have been a good reason to accept a late complaint from her. However, her complaint is much later than that, and she has not claimed it involved child sexual abuse by an adult. It is therefore reasonable to decide that she has been aware of these matters and able to complain about them for some time before now.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because it is late and there is no good reason to exercise discretion to consider it now.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman