We were taken aback this afternoon by a very interesting article in Community Care, a publication which is consistently well written and highly balanced, explaining how a council, in this story the London Borough of Bexley’s, has just been fined more than £12,000 for botching up a child protection investigation.
The Local Government Ombudsman investigating the case was highly critical of the borough and claimed that “the mother had been caused, “an understandable sense of outrage” by the investigation into allegations of abuse by her daughter.”
The council in this instance had tried to take the daughter into care without considering other options and only sought the mother’s agreement AFTER the decision had been taken. For this family though, there is a happy ending. The council was ordered to pay the mother’s legal fees and to seek to establish a proper plan to reunite the daughter and mother.
But how many of us who assist families come across this scenario every day? Certainly at Researching Reform, the bulk of our work in the legal research and support fields is precisely on issues like this. The hallmarks are always the same:
- A local authority who don’t fully understand or implement the rules and regulations/ process
- Professionals who fail to respond meaningfully to complaints about breaches
- Families complaining about not being given relevant documents or not having things explained thoroughly to them and;
- Decisions that require the family’s input being made without them.
We could refer dozens of cases to the Local Government Ombudsman, as just one small project working in a sector with several others, instead we will add the Ombudsman’s details below and let the families who have suffered the effects of such disorganisation take that step and contact them themselves.
If anyone wishes to make a complaint to the Ombudsman, you can find their details below:
Alternatively, if you would like assistance or general support in putting together a complaint, get in touch with us and we will try to assist you.
