The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We have upheld this complaint because the Council delayed consideration under the children’s statutory complaints procedure. The Council has now agreed to resolve the complaint by responding to the complainant at stage one of the procedure.
The complaint
The complainant, who I will call Mr X, complains that the Council allowed a third party to attend Child in Need meetings who had shown bias towards him and who could negatively influence the outcomes of the meeting, impacting he and his child.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended) Under our information sharing agreement, we will share the final decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted).
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The statutory complaints procedure 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.
The first stage of the procedure is local resolution. Councils have up to 20 working days to respond.
If a complainant is not happy with a council’s stage one response, they can ask that it is considered at stage two. At this stage of the procedure, councils appoint an investigator and an independent person who is responsible for overseeing the investigation. Councils have up to 13 weeks to complete stage two of the process from the date of request.
If a complainant is unhappy with the outcome of the stage two investigation, they can ask for a stage three review by an independent panel. The Council must hold the panel within 30 days of the date of request, and then issue a final response within 20 days of the panel hearing.
What happened Mr X complained to the Council that it had allowed a third party to attend Child in Need meetings to discuss his child who had shown bias towards him. Mr X said the Council had recorded the third party as being independent when they were not, and he felt they could negatively influence the outcome of the meetings. The Council refused to investigate Mr X’s complaint because it said it could not investigate the actions of the third party.
If we investigated this complaint, it is likely we would find the Council at fault. This is because Mr X’s complaint was not about the actions of the third party but the actions of the Council in allowing the third party to attend the meetings and describing them as independent. Therefore, further investigation would likely conclude that the Council should have considered Mr X’s complaint at stage one of the statutory procedure and its refusal to do so meant Mr X has not received responses to the questions raised in his complaint.
We therefore asked the Council to consider remedying the injustice this caused Mr X by issuing a stage one response within one month. To its credit, the Council has agreed to this recommendation.
Final decision
We have upheld this complaint. The Council has agreed to resolve the complaint early by providing Mr X with a response to his complaint.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman