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Twenty years ago the regulations behind the statutory children’s social care complaints procedure came into force, and the guidance beneath them has not been revised since.Few people outside children’s services know the procedure exists, and fewer still know what it gives a child, the right to have someone independent read the records and say what…

For most of the twentieth century a child in the care of the state in England had no route to challenge how they were treated. Parents whose children were removed had little more. The Short Report in 1984 described a care system children disappeared into with almost no independent scrutiny of the decisions made about…

Three months after a decision is made, I often cannot tell whether it was a good one. Neither can a complaints panel. And that, not bad practice, is what most upheld complaints come down to. I’ve written for Children & Young People Now about the patterns that repeat across statutory social care complaint investigations, and…

The piece is on what happens when a complaint reaches stage 2 and an independent investigator gets involved. After more than 75 stage 2 investigations across more than 15 local authorities, the patterns are consistent, and they are not always what practitioners expect. The substantive decision is usually defensible. It is almost always the process…

Most charities have policies. Fewer have the clarity that holds things together when the pressure is on. My guest blog for VONNE, the North East’s voluntary sector network, looks at what good governance really means when it matters.

Going independent was the best professional decision I ever made. I learned a huge amount working inside organisations. But at a certain point I realised the most valuable thing I could offer was not tied to any one employer. It was judgment, specialist knowledge, and the freedom to be genuinely independent. I wrote about it…

Resolution Ready has submitted a response to the Department for Education’s consultation on the proposed Child Protection Authority for England. Our response focuses on a gap we see consistently in practice: statutory children’s social care complaints are not currently recognised as part of the national learning landscape, and they should be. Complaints are a formal…

Our submission focused on the statutory complaints process. We highlighted how it is often characterised by delay, confusion and lack of clarity, with some cases taking years from start to finish. This undermines the rights of children, particularly care-experienced young people and families already facing disadvantage. At its best, the complaints procedure is powerful and…