Three months after a decision is made, I often cannot tell whether it was a good one, and neither can a complaints panel. Most upheld complaints come down to that.
I have written for Children and Young People Now about the patterns that repeat across statutory social care complaint investigations, and what services should do about them.
I have conducted more than 75 stage 2 investigations across more than 15 English local authorities. Around half the complaints I investigate are partially upheld. The professional judgment is usually defensible, and the failure is in the process around it. The family was not told what was happening. The reasoning was not written down. Nobody checked the decision before it was acted on.
These findings are about how services operate, and recording failures and communication breakdown appear in nearly every investigation I conduct.
None of this evidence is collected nationally. Hundreds of investigations a year produce detailed findings, and they stay in individual reports held by individual councils. Until that changes, investigators keep writing the same recommendations without asking why the same failures keep appearing.
The piece includes a five point checklist for practitioners and managers.
