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.
Justice seen, to be done.
Thank you Natasha. This has made my day.
You have given me an idea. Thank you.
My pleasure. I wish you luck.
The problem in situations with social workers and the councils which employ them, is that it is extremely difficult to hold them accountable when they mess up, or more importantly when they mess up people’s lives. The Children Act 1989 introduced for the first time an internal Complaints Procedure but gradually the Council’s have rendered it ineffective and nullified it. Firstly the Council lawyers/administrators will prevaricate, procrastinate, and obfuscate with the intention of making the individual get tired and give up. Those with the tenacity to continue will be forced through a multi-tiered system of Stages, and at each stage the Council workers will come up with new arguments, or the Complaints Investigator will attempt a complex whitewash (Investigators are appointed by the Councils and will not bite the hand that feeds them, so it is a case of being judges at their own trial). This process has to be completed before it is possible to go to the Ombudsman and the time taken often runs into at least three years by which time the Complainant is usually fed up, has used vast amounts of time, money, and energy and has been led around in circles and up so many cul-de-sacs that they are weary and ready to pack in. Hidden behind this Complaints process are the Council’s insurers who are urging the Council “Never apologise as it is an admission of blame”, so the fight continues and the insurers escape having to pay.
Then there is accountability in law – or rather a lack of accountability. Parents who are wronged by social workers have no means of redress in law (Bedford case) although their children may when they get older and realise that their lives were messed up by social workers who have long gone, living on their generous pensions in Spain. So the law offers no redress or recompense. It is also necessary to prove that the social worker acted with malice – extremely difficult and often it is incompetence and ignorance which has caused the harm, although malice can often be suspected.
Finally there is professional accountability – the General Social Care Council has been a huge flop in getting rid of social workers who have messed up people’s lives by their wrongdoings. They have consistently failed to remove the licence to practice of social workers who are a disgrace to the profession, unless the matter has already been proven in a criminal court. Lets hope that now the disciplinary function for social workers is to be transferred to the Health Council, there will be more done to get rid of incompetent social workers.
It is only a small percentage of social workers who are bringing the entire profession into disrepute, but there is no way that such bad apples can be thrown out and the profession cleaned up. Ironically, they are often protected by the competent professionals who seem to think it is a slur on them all if one is found incompetent and dismissed. Their standard excuse is always ~A shortage of resources~ and yet billions of pounds worth of extra resources have been thrown into social work in the past 20 years. Nothing will change unti social workers themselves begin to say that they want their profession cleaned up. Until then, they must all bear the brickbats when things go horribly wrong and be publicly castigated and collectively pilloried when mistakes are made.
Thank you for your comments; there is a brilliance to them, thank you for sharing.
I think it also wise to add that anyone seeking to make a complaint successfully needs to make sure 1. the complaint is filed in time, 2. they are not complaining about matters that should or have been addressed by the Court and 3 are procedural issues and that within the complaint the greivance, procedure not followed and the procedural faults with evidence and argument on how it has been breached are contained. Too many people are not reading what the procedure allows and does not allow but make emotional complaints that will always be dismissed or pursuing something they cannot (by virtue of the system) investigate…
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