The children’s statutory complaints procedure
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?
Many complaints about children’s services can be considered under a special three stage procedure – the children’s statutory complaints procedure.
The procedure covers complaints about the council’s services to children in need or in care; about how the council applies to take a child into care; many complaints about fostering, special guardianship and adoption services and complaints about services to children leaving care.
The procedure exists to consider complaints not just by or on behalf of children, but 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 government’s statutory guidance (Getting the best from complaints) and our Guide for Practitioners: Children's statutory complaints process.
Is there anything excluded from the procedure?
The procedure does not cover complaints about child protection matters or how the council assesses families and prepares reports for the court in private proceedings (section 7 or 37 reports).
Councils may decide not to accept a complaint that is made late (over a year after the events complained of) but should not apply this restriction rigidly. They may stop investigating a complaint if there is ongoing court action or police investigations.
Councils should consider how they will respond to a complaint when it is first made. If your complaint comes under the statutory procedure, the council should tell you. If your complaint is not covered by the statutory procedure, or only part of it is, the council should tell you how it will respond to the parts which are excluded or why it will not investigate those matters.
How will the council consider the complaint?
The procedure has three stages: the first is a response from the department concerned. The second stage is an investigation which is overseen by an independent person. The third stage is a review panel. The panel is made up of three independent people.
There are strict timescales for responses at each stage. You should get a stage one response within ten working days of complaining. If you ask for your complaint to go to stage two, the investigation should take no more than 25 working days for a simple complaint and no more than 65 working days if the complaint is more complex. If a complaint unavoidably goes over these deadlines, the council should seek your agreement.
A stage three review panel should meet within 30 working 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 recommendations.
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?
We normally expect you to complete the children’s statutory complaints procedure before coming to us.
However, if the council is refusing to accept or progress your complaint we may accept your complaint to the Ombudsman. We may also accept a complaint that has not completed the procedure if the council has taken significantly longer than it should have. In these cases, our aim is to ensure the council completes the statutory procedure without further delay.
We may also accept a complaint before it has completed the statutory procedure if the stage two investigation was suitably thorough, upheld the complaint and the council agreed to carry out recommendations that would meet most or all of your desired outcomes.
If you have completed the statutory complaints procedure you can complain to us. Our consideration 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 appropriately thorough, fair and transparent. An Ombudsman 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.
For more information on how to complain, please read our step by step process.
Examples of complaints about the Children Act procedure
Ms X complained about how the council carried out actions it agreed to take after it upheld her complaint. Ms X’s disabled child has complex needs which require significant care. To give Ms X respite from her caring responsibilities, the council paid her money so she could arrange for her child to go on short breaks. The council later decided to reduce the amount of money it paid, which Ms X complained about under the children’s statutory complaints procedure. The complaint investigation partially upheld Ms X’s complaint and the council agreed to take some actions to remedy the injustice she experienced because of its failings.
Ms X complained to us, and we found the council’s agreed actions were inadequate to remedy her injustice. We also found the council had not yet carried out some of the actions, nine months after it agreed to them. We recommended the council apologise to Ms X, make a symbolic payment to her and carry out the actions it had delayed completing.
Mr X complained the council did not investigate his complaint about how it cared for him when he was a child. When Mr X was a child, he was under the council’s care. Mr X made a detailed complaint to the council once he became an adult. The council correctly decided it needed to respond to Mr X’s complaint under the children’s statutory complaints procedure. However, it refused to begin an investigation until Mr X reduced the scope of his complaint. We found this was wrong and meant Mr X had not yet had a response to his concerns. We recommended the council apologise to Mr X, pay a symbolic amount to recognise his injustice and begin an investigation without delay.
Our fact sheets give some general information about the most common type of complaints we receive but they cannot cover every situation. If you are not sure whether we can look into your complaint, please contact us.
February 2025