LGO hits out at council over failings that left children at risk of violence

Hull City Council committed maladministration in a case in which children could have been at risk of violence, a report by the Local Government Ombudsman has found.

The Ombudsman said the council should pay the children’s aunt £7,665 because its failings meant she felt forced to take them into her home without financial support.

Hull should also review whether the failures identified by the Ombudsman investigation could still occur and ensure that people appointed to investigate complaints are competent.

The report found that the council did not make an adequate assessment of the children after the first referral that it recorded and then delayed for eight weeks before beginning an assessment after a second referral about a different concern, which it then failed to complete.

The children’s aunt, and social workers from a neighbouring authority, had told Hull that her 14-year-old nephew and 11-year-old niece were at risk living with their mother and her mentally ill, violent partner.

Hull responded to this by visiting the children to do an assessment. But that did not include information from the mental health worker of the mother’s partner, and concluded that the children should remain at their mother’s home with support, which in the event was not provided.

Soon after the neighbouring authority made a formal referral to Hull about a different concern.

Hull has recorded this but has no records of how it allocated the case. Eight weeks later a trainee social worker began, but did not complete, an assessment and failed to visit the children.

The social worker denied that she met the aunt and a social worker from the neighbouring authority, even though they gave “consistent, credible accounts of the meeting and the neighbouring social worker made a file note of it”.

Soon after, a diary note came to light, which “records people as being present that the trainee social worker says she has never met”.

Some six months later his mother’s partner threatened the nephew with a knife. The neighbouring authority made another child protection referral to Hull but there was no response. The nephew then joined his sister in his aunt’s home.

“At all three stages of the complaints procedure Hull failed to address the main point in the aunt’s complaint which was the failure to respond to the child protection concerns,” the Ombudsman said.

The report added: “In the context of child protection, these failures could have had very serious consequences. The Ombudsman found that the significant uncertainty about the safety and well-being of her nephew and niece caused the aunt considerable distress and feeling that she had no alternative but to take them in.”

The Hull Daily Mail reports that the council's head of localities and safeguarding, Jon Plant, said: "The council will continue to ensure the learning from this informs future practice.

"Since the original involvement in this case in 2007, there is clearer guidance around the process for placement of children within extended family, particularly where families cross boundaries with more than one local authority.

"In addition, systems for record-keeping and complaints procedures have been updated and we will continue to review them regularly.”

Mark Smulian