Summary: The Council is at fault for not progressing this complaint to stage two of the children’s statutory complaints procedure. The Council has now agreed to do so without delay.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I will call Ms X, complains about the actions of the Council’s children’s services in relation to the care of her daughter. Ms X complained to the Ombudsman that the Council had not progressed her complaint to stage two of the statutory complaints procedure.

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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’. 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)
3. Under our information sharing agreement, we will share the final decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted).

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

The statutory complaints procedure

6. The law sets out a three-stage procedure for councils to follow when looking at complaints about children’s social care services. The accompanying statutory guidance, Getting the Best from Complaints, explains councils’ responsibilities in more detail.
7. The first stage of the procedure is local resolution. Councils have up to 20 working days to respond.
8. If a complainant is not happy with a council’s stage one response, they can ask that it is considered at stage two. At this stage of the procedure, councils appoint an investigator and an independent person who is responsible for overseeing the investigation. Councils have up to 13 weeks to complete stage two of the process from the date of request.
9. At stage two the investigator and independent person will try to agree a statement of complaint with the complainant. In cases where agreement can’t be made, we expect council’s to decide if they have sufficient information to proceed. If so, they should do so.
10. If a complainant is unhappy with the outcome of the stage two investigation, they can ask for a stage three review by an independent panel. The Council must hold the panel within 30 days of the date of request, and then issue a final response within 20 days of the panel hearing.

What happened

11. Ms X complained to the Council about its children’s services involvement with the care of her daughter. The Council considered the complaint at stage one of the statutory complaints procedure. Dissatisfied with the response Ms X wrote to the Council asking it to progress her complaint to stage two of the procedure, explaining her reasons for the request.
12. The Council allocated the complaint to an investigator and independent person who arranged to meet with Ms X to agree a statement of complaint. Due to a weather warning the meeting had to be cancelled so the Council tried to contact Ms X to rearrange it. The Council say Ms X did not respond and the date of the meeting passed. The Council say Ms X contacted it in March to say she did not attend the rearranged date because she was unhappy that the previous meeting had been cancelled.

Analysis

13. Ms X gave the Council her reasons for requesting a stage two complaint in writing. The Council should therefore have made the decision to continue with its investigation in March, when it became clear a statement of complaint would not be agreed. Its failure to progress the complaint is fault. However, the Council has now agreed to continue its investigation without further delay, so I do not make any further recommendations

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Final decision

14. We uphold this complaint with a finding of fault.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman