The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint alleging corruption in the children’s services department when responding to this complainant’s concerns. This is because we are highly unlikely to add anything more to the investigation already carried out by the Council.
The complaint
Ms X complains the Council has failed to properly investigate her complaints that staff in the children’s services department have acted in a corrupt manner. She says staff have not considered her points fairly and have favoured the other party in her private law case to decide parental contact. She says all of this has caused suffering to her child.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in the decision making, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended) We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide we could not add to any previous investigation by the Council. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)) 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) It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.
How I considered this complaint
I have considered Ms X’s complaint information and the Council’s complaint responses to her.
I also read our previous decision related to this complaint (22 006 440) which said we could not look at matters that had been considered in court.
My assessment
The law sets out a three-stage procedure for councils to follow when looking at complaints about children’s social care services. The accompanying statutory guidance, ‘Getting the Best from Complaints’, explains councils’ responsibilities in more detail.
I note the Council has considered Ms X’s complaint in full through the above procedure albeit some of her complaints concerned matters decided in court.
The main decisions leading to Ms X’s complaints were decided in court, and as Ms X has previously been advised, we cannot consider any aspect of the Council’s actions in connection with this.
Ms X’s other complaints to the Council are about the welfare of a child. And about Council staff who have responded to her.
The Council found Ms X’s child’s welfare concerns did not justify triggering its safeguarding procedures. It said Ms X’s concerns were her ‘opinions’ about parenting. Plus, her allegations about unfair and incorrect responses from staff ultimately came down to staff not acceding to Ms X’s opinions and wishes. Where staff had made errors in paperwork, it found these were amended for e.g. the immunisation details.
It upheld one complaint about incorrect information provided to her MP and apologised to Ms X. It also said it would review how it had dealt with Ms X’s ‘volume’ of emails sent to the Council for its own internal learning.
The Council also advised its paperwork contained information from other agencies such as the NHS. And Ms X should raise her concerns to the individual bodies directly to rectify any errors.
I find all of the above in line with the Ombudsman’s guidelines on complaints handling and we are unlikely to achieve anything more.
Final decision
I will not investigate as we are highly unlikely to be able to add anything to the investigation already carried out by the Council.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman