Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (24 011 310)
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We find that the Council has accepted it has not considered Mrs X’s complaint under the statutory process for complaints about children’s services. The Council has agreed to resolve the matter by immediately beginning a Stage 2 investigation under that process.
The complaint
- Mrs X complained about a decision and policy of the Council in making direct payments for her child’s social care needs.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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)
- Under the information sharing agreement between the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), we will share this decision with Ofsted.
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- If we investigated Mrs X’s substantive complaint it is likely we would find the Council at fault. This is because it has not considered it via the statutory complaints process for complaints about children’s social care that it must use. Instead, it used its own corporate process and declined to progress the complaint beyond the first stage of that process.
- We therefore asked to the Council to consider remedying the injustice caused to Mrs X by its actions by considering her complaint at Stage 2 of the statutory complaints process.
Agreed action
- To its credit the Council agreed to resolve this matter and will begin a Stage 2 investigation under the statutory process immediately.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the substantive matters because the Council has agreed to consider her complaint by immediately considering the complaint via the correct process.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman