Summary: Ms X complains of failures by the Council to meet her son, Mr Z’s special educational and care needs, causing significant distress to her family. While there was no fault in the SEN matter, the Council failed to properly consider the safeguarding risks to Mr Z’s younger siblings repeatedly raised by Ms X. This went on for almost three years, causing her distress and leading to the younger siblings suffering repeated unprovoked violent assaults by Mr Z, who was much larger than them, as well as fear of further attacks.

Finding

The Ombudsman upheld the complaint and found fault found causing injustice.

Recommendations

To remedy the injustice caused by fault, the Council should, within a month of the date of this report:

• apologise to the family for the failings identified here; and
• pay Ms X £8,250, made up of £2,000 for her injustice, £2,000 for each of the three younger children’s injustice, and £250 for Mr Z’s injustice. We have confidence that Ms X will use the sum to the benefit of her children.

To reduce risk for other children, it should also:

• alert all staff to the fact that children have the right to be protected and that social care staff should retain an open mind. We are recommending that s.47 of the Children Act 1989 should not be ruled out and could be appropriate in exceptional circumstances when providing support to disabled children and their families; and
• remind those responsible for the conduct of placement panels that there must always be a record of what information they consider and of the rationale for their placement decisions. In response to a draft of this report, the Council told us it now does this, which we welcome.

Ombudsman satisfied with Council's response: 16 July 2021.

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