What happens when a family complains about you?

Most social workers know that a statutory complaints procedure exists. But few have seen what happens when a complaint reaches Stage 2 and an independent investigator gets involved. 

I have conducted more than 75 Stage 2 investigations across more than 15 local authorities, and I want to share with you what I typically find, because patterns are consistent, and they are not always what practitioners expect.

A Stage 2 investigation is not a quick process. It typically takes three to six months. I go through years of case records, interview social workers and managers, and write a report that commonly runs to 50 or 80 pages. The investigating officer cost alone can be £3,000 to £4,000. These are serious, detailed examinations of how a service has operated.

Around half the complaints I investigate are partially upheld. That surprised me at first, but it makes sense when you see what is actually going on. The substantive decision, the professional judgement call, is usually defensible. I see good social work regularly. I see difficult decisions made under pressure with limited information by people who care about the families they work with. When a decision is within the range of professional judgement, my report says so and explains why. 

But it is almost always the process around the decision that lets people down, and that is where the findings sit.

Case example

Let me give you an example. A mother reports concerns about a child's father. A Section 47 enquiry is initiated. The father complains, alleging bias. He says the social worker accepted the mother's account uncritically and the conclusions were predetermined. My investigation does not uphold the allegation. The concerns were substantiated, supported by information from partner agencies. The social work was sound.

But a separate finding is upheld. During the strategy discussion, the police shared information from their records. The social worker summarised it in the initial child protection conference report. This is something that happens every day. You pull key points from a partner agency's input and put them into your own report.

The problem was that the summary changed the meaning. Phrases from a police log were condensed in a way that made them read differently from what the police had actually said or concluded. 

The father was described in terms that were more definitive than the original source material supported. That wording then carried through into the conference report, the child protection plan and beyond. It followed him. Every professional who read those documents formed a view of him based on a summary that did not accurately reflect the original information. Nobody went back to check.

The complaint is partially upheld. The decision to investigate was right and the child protection concerns were substantiated. But the way the evidence was handled in the report was not good enough, and once that wording was in the system, it shaped everything that followed and  became near impossible to correct. 

I see this kind of thing all the time. The decision stands, but the process around it does not. Recording is at the centre of it. Not the quality of your assessments or your analysis, but whether the reasoning behind a decision was written down at the point you made it. If you cannot show why you did what you did, nobody can defend you. Not a panel, not the Ombudsman, and not the investigating officer sitting across the table from you.

Other pitfalls

Communication is the other thing. Most of the complaints I have investigated could have been avoided if someone had explained what was happening and why. A parent who understands a decision, even one they disagree with, rarely complains about it. A parent who finds out weeks later, or gets a text message instead of a conversation, almost always does.

And then there is supervision. I expect to see decisions tested before they are acted on. Too often, the record just says "discussed case, agreed plan" with nothing about what was actually discussed or why. That protects nobody.

So what can you do? 

• Document your reasoning at the point you make a decision, not afterwards
• When you summarise information from another agency, check it against the original
• Explain what you are doing and why to the people it affects
• Use supervision to test your thinking before you act and make sure that conversation is recorded properly

These points sound basic, and they are, but they appear as findings in investigation after investigation across every local authority I have worked in.

The complaints procedure is not something done to you. It holds your service to account on behalf of the children and families you work with. And when your practice is good, that is what the investigation will find.

James Anderson is principal consultant at Resolution Ready, an independent consultancy specialising in statutory children's social care complaints investigations. 

This article includes an illustrative scenario. It is not a real case but is representative of the type of issues that commonly arise as one element of a Stage 2 complaint investigation.