Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the advice provided to Ms X by an Early Help practitioner. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault to justify further investigation.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains about the advice and actions of an Early Help service. She says the service shared information with her child’s school without her consent and gave inappropriate advice which failed to consider her children’s disabilities.
2. Ms X also complained that the stage two complaint did not properly investigate the matter.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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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

6. Ms X was on the waiting list for an assessment and support from a family support worker. Ms X contacted the service as she was struggling to cope and wanted some help and advice. A family support worker arranged a telephone call with Ms X to provide some general advice. The context was one of Ms X’s children often arriving late for school. Ms X wanted to know what she could expect from the school in terms of reasonable adjustments for her child’s disability.
7. In response to Ms X’s request for help, the worker explained to Ms X that they would need to alert the school. Ms X replied to confirm she understood this.
8. The support worker made detailed notes of the call and the advice to Ms X. This clearly stated that the advice was generic and not based on any of the specific needs of the family. This would need to wait for the full assessment once allocated to a worker. The call focussed on strategies and routines Ms X might be able to use at home to help in the mornings.
9. We will not investigate this complaint. Ms X knew and accepted that the support worker would contact the school. The advice in the call was clearly stated to be generic and not specific to the disabilities or needs of the family. There is not enough evidence of fault to justify further investigation.
10. We also will not investigate the complaint handling. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are not investigating the substantive issue.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman