Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about Children’s Social Care services. This is because it relates to matters that have been the subject of court proceedings. We will not investigate matters that might be separable to those proceedings because we could not add to the Council’s response. Therefore there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the social workers who are involved with his family. He says their lies and incompetence have led to his child being taken into care and caused him to miss family contact sessions. He wants the Council to discipline the staff he complained about.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. 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)
4. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
5. 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:

• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. Mr X complained about social workers that were involved with his family. He said they lied in Court and made false statements in their evidence to Court.
9. The Ombudsman cannot investigate this part of the complaint because it relates to Court proceedings.
10. Mr X further complained that staff were incompetent and gave him wrong information, including that he could enter the family home when a Court Order meant he was not allowed. Mr X knew there was a Court Order which meant he was not allowed to enter the family home. The Council quickly realised he could not enter the family home when Mr X asked it to write down that he was allowed to enter. Mr X has not suffered significant injustice because of any fault of the Council in this part of the complaint.
11. Mr X also said the Court ordered that he should be allowed three family time sessions per week. He said he missed out on some of the sessions. That appears to be because of the child’s availability, transport problems and a lack of staff available to supervise the sessions.
12. The Council dealt with this by complaining to the taxi company. This meant the service improved. The Council considered if it could rectify the missed sessions but decided it could not because of the upcoming Court hearing and the child’s school timetable. The Council apologised to Mr X for cancelling the sessions and I am satisfied that was a suitable remedy. An investigation by the Ombudsman is unlikely to achieve anything more for Mr X. The Ombudsman cannot comment on, or enforce any alleged breach of a Court Order. Only the Court can do that.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because it relates to matters that have been the subject of court proceedings. We will not investigate matters that might be separable to those proceedings because we could not add to the Council’s response. Therefore there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman