Summary: We will not investigate this complaint that the Council has failed to take action to identify the complainant’s daughter’s needs and put appropriate provision and therapies in place to address them. This is because part of the complaint is late and there are no grounds to consider it now, and investigation would not achieve the outcome the complainant is seeking.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains that the Council has failed to take action to identify her daughter’s needs and put appropriate provision and therapies in place to address them.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
3. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Mrs X says that the Council did not share with her the possibility that her adoptive daughter may have Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). She says that, since she became aware of FASD in 2015, the Council has repeatedly failed to act on her requests for an assessment to identify her daughter’s needs and make appropriate provision available.
7. Mrs X says that, as a result of failure on the Council’s part, her daughter’s education and welfare have suffered. She wants the Council to acknowledge its failings directly to her daughter and set out how it intends to correct them. She has set out specifically that she wants a place for her daughter at the school of her choice, and specific therapeutic and educational provision to be made.
8. In response to the complaint, the Council accepted that it delayed identifying Mrs X’s daughter’s needs. It apologised for this and said it would meet with Mrs X to identify action to be taken.
9. Mrs X says the meeting failed to do so and proved upsetting for her daughter. She says the Council has failed to respond to her concerns about the lack of action on the basis that the complaint has already been addressed.
10. The correspondence Mrs X has provided shows that her daughter has been the subject of four adoption reviews, and that the first three failed to identify the need for a multi-disciplinary assessment. We will not consider the period in which these assessments took place because the complaint about them is late. Late complaints are where someone takes more than 12 months to come to the Ombudsman about a matter. This applies to the first three adoption assessments and there are no grounds for us to consider them now. Even if we were to do so, there is no prospect that investigation could identify specific provision which would have been made if the assessments had had different outcomes.
11. We will not investigate more recent matters because our intervention would not achieve the outcomes Mrs X has asked for. It is not for the Ombudsman to comment on which provision or therapies should be made. This is a matter which can be addressed through the Education Health and Care Needs Assessment which is underway, the purpose of which is precisely to identify these needs and set out the provision required to meet them. If Mrs X is unhappy with the outcome of the Assessment, she will have the right to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability). This is the appropriate recourse available to her.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because part of the complaint is late and there are no grounds to consider it now, and investigation would not achieve the outcome Mrs X is seeking.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman