Summary: We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint about matters involved in Court proceedings. There are other bodies better placed to consider his data accuracy and officers’ behaviour complaints.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, complains about children services actions.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)
3. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by maladministration and service failure. 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, section 34(3), as amended)
4. 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
• there is another body better placed to consider this complaint. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
7. Mr X had an opportunity to comment on a draft version of this decision.

Back to top

My assessment

Background

8. Mr X says he had a Court order which meant two of his children, Y and Z, lived with him and had contact with their mother. He says this ran for ten years. He says in January 2021, the elder child, Y did not return home from contact with their mother. He says he then did not see Y until July.
9. Mr X says he applied to Court in January 2021 for the order to be enforced. He says Council’s children services also then became involved. It completed a single assessment. Mr X says this was inaccurate. Mr X says the assessment recommended a child in need plan. He says this was not completed. Mr X says the Council’s actions delayed the Court proceedings. This he says cost him money and lost contact with his children. He says the Council officers were not impartial and never took him seriously.
10. The Council considered Mr X’s complaint at all three stages of its Children Act statutory complaints procedure. When a council has investigated something under the statutory children’s complaint process, the Ombudsman would not normally re-investigate it unless we consider the investigation was flawed.
11. The Council has apologised for some of the officers’ behaviour. It has agreed to a meeting to discuss the assessment inaccuracies. The stage three decision said that a team manager should have been at the meeting to end the child in need plan. But there is no suggestion if they had been, the outcome would have been different.

Analysis

12. We cannot investigate the content of any report the Council gave the Court, nor its preparation. We also cannot investigate issues which are connected to those proceedings such as the Council’s actions which affected the contact and residence issues Mr X complains of.
13. We are unlikely to obtain any remedy for the ending of the child in need plan. The Council apologised for poor communication. There is no suggestion, if the team manager had been at the meeting, the plan would not have been ended.
14. It is unlikely we could achieve a different outcome in respect of his complaints about the inaccurate data and the social workers’ actions. This is because:
1. Mr X has the right to request records are ‘rectified’. This means any factual inaccuracies are corrected. If the Council refuses to do so, he can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Parliament set up the ICO to consider data protection disputes which includes ‘right to rectification’ disputes. The ICO is better placed than us to consider if the Council should change its records particularly because there are complex exemptions for child protection case files.
2. Our role is to investigate the actions of the Council as a corporate body, not to hold a single officer accountable. If Mr X has concerns about the professionalism or integrity of an individual social worker, it is reasonable to expect him to report his concerns to their professional body, Social Work England.

Back to top

Final decision

15. We will not and cannot investigate this complaint. This is because we cannot investigate matters linked to Court proceedings, there are other bodies better placed and we are unlikely to obtain a remedy for the child in need plan’s ending.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman