Suffolk County Council (20 009 934)
Category : Children's care services > Looked after children
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 22 Feb 2021
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint about the level of contact he gets with his children. The Court decided this.
The complaint
- The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, says the Council has not provided him with enough contact with his children and he would like the Council to change the allocated social worker.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
- 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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
- We investigate complaints of injustice caused by 'maladministration' and 'service failure'. I have used the word 'fault' to refer to these. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered the information Mr X provided and the Court orders which the Council provided. I considered Mr X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.
What I found
- In late October 2020, a Court made a final full Care Order for four of Mr X’s children. This means it ordered the children be cared for by the Council. It agreed with the Council’s plan to provide Mr X with three contact supervised sessions a year.
- Mr X says he had not had contact during the Court proceedings. When he met his children in November for the first contact session, he says they wanted to see him more. He also thinks the allocated social worker is not bonding well with the family.
- We cannot investigate whether Mr X has the right amount of contact as the Court has ordered this. We cannot investigate the amount of contact he received during the court proceedings process as the Court was considering it.
- Mr X has since told us the Council has now changed the allocated social worker.
Final decision
- We cannot investigate this complaint. This is because the Court decided the contact level and we cannot change this.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman