This fact sheet is for people who wish to make, or have already made, a complaint about a council's Children’s Service. It advises you on the way the council should deal with your complaint and when you can ask us to consider it.

How will the council consider my complaint?

Councils consider some complaints about Children’s Services under a special three stage process – the children’s statutory complaints procedure. Complaints can be made by or on behalf of children and other people such as parents, guardians and foster carers can also make complaints in their own right.

If you complain to the council, it should tell you whether it is going to consider your complaint through its own procedure, or under the children’s statutory complaints procedure.

What is covered under the statutory procedure?

The procedure covers complaints about the council’s services to:

• children in need or in care;
• fostering;
• adoption support; and
• special guardianship arrangements.

The procedure can look at complaints made on behalf of children and from their parents, foster carers, special guardians, adopters and others who may have an interest in their wellbeing.

You can find further details about what is covered by following the link to the relevant guidance (Getting the best from complaints) and our Guide for Practitioners: Children's statutory complaints procedure.

Is there anything not covered by the procedure?

The procedure does not include complaints about child protection or safeguarding or how the council assesses families and prepares reports for the court in private proceedings (known as Section 7 or 37 reports). These may be dealt with under the council’s own complaints procedure. Councils should be clear about which procedure they are using, and why.

Councils may decide not to accept a complaint that is made more than a year after the events complained of. It should not impose this restriction rigidly but may still decide it can’t investigate because of the time that has passed, even if the person was unable to complain sooner.

Councils might also decide they cannot investigate a complaint if there is ongoing court action or police investigations into the same or similar issues.

If the council refuses to accept your complaint it should tell you that you can complain to us. 

How will the council consider the complaint?

The procedure has three stages:

• the first stage is a response to the complaint from the service concerned.
• the second stage is an investigation and report with independent oversight from an Independent Person.
• the third stage is a review panel. The Panel is made up of independent people.

There are strict timescales for responses at each stage.

• You should get a stage 1 response within 10 days of complaining.
• If you ask for your complaint to go to stage 2, the investigation should take no more than 25 days for a simple complaint and no more than 65 days if the complaint is more complex. If a complaint unavoidably goes over these deadlines, the council should tell you.

• A stage 3 review panel should meet within 30 days of you requesting it. Afterwards, the Panel must provide you with its report within five working days. The council then has 15 working days to respond to the panel’s reccomendations.

We can, and do, criticise councils for exceeding these deadlines without good reason and we can consider the impact on you of any avoidable delay in the process.

When can I bring my complaint to the Ombudsman?

Because the children’s statutory complaints procedure is set out in law, we normally expect you to complete it before coming to us. However, we may accept a complaint early if, for example:

• there are long delays in the process;
• the council has admitted fault but hasn’t agreed to put a remedy in place. 

You should follow our top tips for making a complaint if your complaint is not making any progress. If the council has not progressed your complaint after you asked it for an update you should contact us.

What happens if I am still unhappy after the council has completed its response to my complaint?

For more information on how to complain to us, please read our step by step process.

Our consideration of your complaint will focus on how the council handled the procedure. This is because stage two and three of the procedure involve independent people who should ensure the council’s consideration of the complaint is thorough, fair and transparent. Our investigation into the issues you complained to the council about would only duplicate that work. If we find fault in how the council carried out the investigation or appeal, we will normally ask it to hold those complaint stages again, without fault. We will not normally investigate the issues you complained to the council about.

July 2025