Resources

Depending on the problem, you can approach:

• Allocated Social Worker
• Senior Social Worker
• Team Manager
• Service Manager
• Head of Service
• Assistant/Deputy Director
• Director of Children's Services

Do not assume your complaint has reached senior management simply because you sent it to a generic Children's Services inbox.

Ask for the name and position of the officer making the decision.

Some Children's Services complaints must be dealt with under the special statutory procedure created for children's social care.

It can include complaints relating to children in need, children in care, fostering, adoption support and special guardianship.

The process can involve:

Stage 1 — Local Resolution

The council attempts to resolve the complaint.

Stage 2 — Independent Investigation

This normally involves:

• an Independent Investigator
• an Independent Person overseeing the investigation

Stage 3 — Independent Review Panel

A panel reviews how the Stage 2 complaint was dealt with.

Not every Children's Services complaint falls under this statutory procedure, so ask the council in writing which complaints procedure it is using and why.

If the statutory procedure applies, councils cannot simply invent their own replacement process.

Official guidance: Children's social care complaints guidance (GOV.UK) ↗

Do not automatically assume you must wait forever.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) says it can sometimes consider a complaint before the statutory procedure has finished where there have been significant delays.

Keep records of:

• dates
• unanswered emails
• extensions
• missed deadlines
• cancelled meetings
• changes of investigator
• failures to provide decisions
• failures to progress between complaint stages

A detailed chronology can become extremely important.

If your child is looked after by the local authority, there should normally be an Independent Reviewing Officer involved.

Concerns can be raised with:

• the IRO
• the IRO's manager
• the IRO service manager

If you believe the care plan is not being followed, contact arrangements are not being properly considered, reviews are ineffective or the authority is failing to carry out agreed actions, put this to the IRO in writing.

Every upper-tier/local authority responsible for Children's Social Care has a Director of Children's Services (DCS).

This is one of the most senior statutory children's-services positions within the authority.

For serious concerns involving multiple teams, management failures or widespread practice issues, escalate beyond the individual social-work team.

You can escalate serious administrative or corporate concerns to the council's Chief Executive / Head of Paid Service.

This is particularly relevant where the issue is no longer just about one social worker but appears to involve:

• multiple departments
• senior management
• repeated process failure
• institutional governance
• failure to implement remedies
• breakdown of internal accountability

This is not a replacement for the statutory complaint process, but senior leadership should be made aware of serious corporate failures.

This is one of the least-known escalation routes.

Every council has a Monitoring Officer.

They have important responsibilities concerning:

• legality
• the council constitution
• decision-making
• governance
• probity
• ethics
• serious maladministration within their statutory remit

The Monitoring Officer is not an appeal body for ordinary social-work decisions.

But where the concern involves serious governance, unlawful decision-making or failures in the council's constitutional arrangements, this may be an appropriate route.

Your ward councillor can undertake casework and raise concerns with officers on your behalf.

You can also approach other councillors where their particular council role is relevant.

Find your councillors through your council website.

Most councils have a senior elected councillor whose portfolio includes:

• Children's Services
• Children and Families
• Children's Social Care
• Children and Young People

Titles vary between councils.

They provide political oversight of the service.

They usually cannot personally overturn an individual social-work decision, but serious service failures should not automatically be kept away from the elected member responsible for the portfolio.

For serious council-wide governance concerns, you can write to the Leader of the Council.

Again, this is not an alternative appeals process, but elected leadership can be made aware of evidence alleging systemic failures.

Do not assume you can only contact the political party running the council.

You can contact:

• Leader of the Opposition
• opposition children's-services spokespersons
• other elected councillors

They may be able to raise questions, request scrutiny or challenge the administration politically.

Find your council's committee responsible for scrutiny of Children's Services.

It may be called:

• Children and Families Scrutiny Committee
• Children and Adults Scrutiny Committee
• People Scrutiny Committee
• Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee

Scrutiny normally cannot decide your individual complaint or overturn a social-work decision.

However, scrutiny committees exist to hold executive decision-makers to account and can examine evidence of wider service or systemic problems.

If numerous families are experiencing the same problem, scrutiny becomes especially relevant.

Many councils allow residents to submit:

• questions to Full Council
• petitions
• questions to cabinet members
• representations to committees

Check your council constitution.

This will not resolve every individual case, but it can put an issue into the public democratic record.

Where concerns relate to:

• councillor conduct
• governance arrangements
• ethical standards
• constitutional matters

check the council's Standards, Audit, Governance or Ethics Committee arrangements.

Complaints against councillors normally follow a separate Code of Conduct procedure.

Children's Services handles extremely sensitive personal information.

If the concern involves:

• unlawful disclosure
• personal information sent to the wrong person
• insecure email accounts
• missing information
• subject access requests
• inaccurate personal data
• records management
• data security

contact the council's Data Protection Officer.

If the council does not properly resolve a data-protection complaint, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.

The ICO deals with information-rights and data-protection law.

It does not decide whether a social worker's safeguarding assessment was correct.

Keep the two issues separate:

social-care complaint → social-care routes

personal-data problem → DPO/ICO

Official guidance: Make a data protection complaint (ICO) ↗

This is not an escalation body, but it can be extremely important.

You can request personal information held about you under data-protection law, subject to applicable exemptions.

Evidence can be very difficult to challenge when you do not know what has actually been recorded.

Keep:

• emails
• assessments
• reports
• complaint correspondence
• meeting records
• contact decisions
• review documents
• chronology entries
• screenshots
• letters

Do not rely solely on telephone conversations.

Official guidance: Subject access requests (ICO) ↗

If you believe Children's Services records contain inaccurate personal data, put the challenge in writing.

Data-protection law does not mean every professional opinion you disagree with must automatically be deleted.

But factual inaccuracies should be clearly identified and challenged.

Where disagreement remains, ask what mechanism exists for your correction, disagreement or supplementary statement to be recorded.

This may be one of the most important things you do.

Create a chronology containing:

DATE → PERSON → EVENT → EVIDENCE → RESPONSE → OUTCOME

Keep copies of everything.

When something happens verbally, follow it with an email:

"Further to our telephone conversation today, my understanding is..."

Five months later, that email may be the only reliable record of what was said.

The LGSCO investigates complaints involving things such as:

• maladministration
• service failure
• procedural fault
• failures in complaint handling

Normally you should first give the council an opportunity to deal with the complaint.

For qualifying Children's Services complaints there is a three-stage statutory process.

However, the Ombudsman confirms that significant delays can sometimes justify approaching it before all stages have finished.

The Ombudsman generally cannot:

• overturn a court judgment
• investigate something already determined by a court simply because you disagree with it
• act as an appeal court

Official guidance: How to complain (LGSCO) ↗

Ofsted inspects local authority Children's Services.

Ofsted is not an alternative Ombudsman for your individual complaint.

However, you can share information about Children's Social Care with Ofsted, particularly where there may be:

• wider safeguarding failures
• poor-quality practice
• systemic problems
• repeated concerns
• whistleblowing information
• patterns affecting multiple children

Ofsted expressly says complaints and whistleblowing concerns suggesting a pattern of concerns can form part of the intelligence it considers when deciding how to inspect an authority.

Think of this as:

Regulatory intelligence

rather than an appeal against your individual social worker.

Official guidance: Raise concerns about children's social care (Ofsted) ↗

Social Work England regulates individual registered social workers.

It can consider serious concerns about a social worker's fitness to practise.

Examples can include serious concerns involving:

• professional boundaries
• confidentiality
• dishonesty or fraud
• serious misconduct
• unsafe practice

But Social Work England does not regulate the council itself and cannot overturn:

• care proceedings
• council decisions
• contact decisions
• family-court judgments

A disagreement with a social worker is not automatically a fitness-to-practise matter.

Serious professional-conduct evidence is what matters.

Official guidance: Raise a concern about a social worker (Social Work England) ↗

This route is frequently misunderstood.

The LADO deals with allegations concerning people who work or volunteer with children.

Under current safeguarding guidance, allegations-management arrangements should cover situations where someone working with children may have:

• harmed a child
• possibly committed an offence involving a child
• behaved in a way suggesting they pose a risk of harm
• behaved in a way suggesting they may not be suitable to work with children

This is not the route for an ordinary complaint about poor service.

Different councils also have different arrangements for whether members of the public contact the LADO directly or the allegation first goes through the employer/safeguarding route.

Search:

"[your council] LADO"

Every area has multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

The three statutory safeguarding partners are:

• the Local Authority
• the NHS Integrated Care Board
• the Police

This is important.

Safeguarding is not solely controlled by Children's Services.

Where the concern involves wider multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, look for your area's:

Local Safeguarding Children Partnership

and its escalation arrangements.

Current legislation continues to place joint safeguarding responsibility across the local authority, ICB and police.

Many safeguarding partnerships have an Independent Scrutineer or equivalent independent scrutiny arrangements.

Their role is concerned with examining the effectiveness of the multi-agency safeguarding system.

Search:

"[YOUR AREA] Safeguarding Children Partnership Independent Scrutineer"

This may be particularly relevant where the concern is about whether agencies are effectively challenging one another.

The local ICB is one of the statutory safeguarding partners.

If Children's Services concerns also involve:

• health safeguarding
• paediatric services
• health assessments
• mental health provision
• failures of multi-agency working

consider the relevant NHS safeguarding and complaints routes as well.

Do not assume every safeguarding concern has to be sent back into the council.

Police are also one of the three statutory safeguarding partners.

If you are contacting police about safeguarding-system governance, make that clear.

This is different from reporting an alleged criminal offence.

If you genuinely have evidence potentially indicating a criminal offence, report the underlying facts to the police.

Do not simply write:

"Children's Services are corrupt."

Explain:

• who did what
• when it happened
• what evidence exists
• why you believe it was deliberate
• what possible offence you believe requires assessment

Poor practice, maladministration and negligence are not automatically crimes.

The Children's Commissioner's Help at Hand service supports children who:

• are in care
• have a social worker
• are working with social services
• live away from home
• are care leavers under 25

They can provide independent advice and make representations.

Serious unresolved cases can potentially be escalated to Director level within public services.

The service is primarily child-led, so parents should understand that the Commissioner's office is not another complaints regulator.

Freephone:

0800 528 0731

Official guidance: Help at Hand (Children's Commissioner) ↗

Children and young people may be entitled to independent advocacy in various circumstances.

Ask:

"Is my child entitled to an independent advocate?"

An advocate can help a child:

• understand their rights
• express their wishes and feelings
• make a complaint
• participate in meetings
• challenge decisions

Do not assume the social worker is the only person through whom the child's views can be communicated.

Coram Voice provides advocacy and support to care-experienced children and young people.

This can be particularly useful for:

• looked-after children
• care leavers
• young people wanting to complain
• young people who feel their views are not being heard

Family Rights Group provides independent advice to parents, relatives and kinship carers involved with Children's Services in England.

Their advice service can help families understand:

• Children's Services processes
• child-protection procedures
• pre-proceedings
• care proceedings
• family-and-friends care
• legal options

Advice line:

0808 801 0366

Their advice is independent of the local authority.

Coram Child Law Advice provides information about child and family law, including local-authority involvement with families.

The House of Commons Library specifically identifies both Family Rights Group and Coram Child Law Advice as potential specialist sources of assistance for families complaining about Children's Services.

Prospective and existing foster carers should know about the:

Independent Review Mechanism – IRM

Certain qualifying fostering decisions can be independently reviewed.

This can include some decisions relating to:

• suitability to foster
• approval
• terms of approval

The IRM makes a recommendation; the final decision remains with the fostering provider.

The IRM also deals with certain qualifying adoption decisions, including:

• suitability to adopt
• certain adoption-record disclosure decisions

Again, it is a specialist review mechanism rather than a general complaints body.

The Department for Education is the central government department responsible for Children's Social Care policy.

It is not normally the appeals body for an individual council complaint — official DfE guidance directs ordinary local-authority Children's Services complaints through the council and then the relevant Ombudsman.

However, evidence of serious systemic Children's Services issues, national policy failures or matters relevant to local-authority improvement/intervention can still be brought to central government's attention.

Look for:

• Minister for Children and Families
• Secretary of State for Education
• relevant Children's Social Care teams within DfE

Use the role, rather than relying on a person's name, because ministers change.

Official guidance: Department for Education complaints procedure (GOV.UK) ↗

This route relates to the governance of the council itself, not whether one social worker made the correct decision.

MHCLG oversees the local-government Best Value framework.

Central government has powers ranging from support and monitoring to statutory intervention where serious council-wide governance failures exist.

For very serious systemic governance concerns, look for:

Local Government Stewardship and Interventions

Again:

This is not another Stage 4 complaint process.

It is potentially relevant where evidence raises questions about the functioning and governance of the authority itself.

This is extremely important.

Check whether your council is subject to:

• Commissioners
• Ministerial Envoys
• Best Value Inspectors
• a Best Value Notice
• statutory directions
• another formal government improvement intervention

If it is, identify the appointed Commissioners, Envoys or Inspectors.

These people exist specifically because concerns have already arisen about the council's ability to meet required governance standards.

The Government maintains a public list of current and previous statutory Best Value interventions.

Search:

"[YOUR COUNCIL] statutory intervention GOV.UK"

Your constituency MP can:

• make representations
• contact the council
• write to ministers
• approach government departments
• raise systemic concerns
• assist with certain Parliamentary Ombudsman referrals

An MP cannot overturn a Family Court decision.

But they can be an important escalation route where public bodies are failing to engage.

The Education Committee scrutinises the Department for Education and matters affecting children.

It does not investigate individual family complaints.

However, committees sometimes invite evidence when conducting inquiries.

Systemic evidence affecting large numbers of families may therefore be relevant to future parliamentary inquiries.

This committee scrutinises central government's work relating to local government.

Again:

It is not an individual complaint tribunal.

But evidence concerning widespread council governance problems may be relevant to parliamentary scrutiny or inquiries.

Do not confuse this with the LGSCO.

LGSCO → local councils

PHSO → UK government departments and certain other public bodies

If you complain to DfE, MHCLG or another government department and exhaust its complaint process, a complaint about the government department's own maladministration may potentially go to the PHSO.

For UK-government complaints, the PHSO currently requires an MP to refer the complaint.

Complaints cannot solve everything.

If the issue concerns:

• care proceedings
• contact with a child in care
• discharge of a care order
• placement orders
• adoption
• parental responsibility
• Family Court decisions

you may need a specialist children's-law solicitor.

A complaints body cannot simply overturn a Family Court judgment.

This is another route people often discover far too late.

Where the complaint concerns whether a council has:

• failed to perform a statutory duty
• acted unlawfully
• followed an unlawful policy
• failed to follow proper procedure
• made an irrational public-law decision
• unlawfully interfered with rights

seek advice from a solicitor specialising in:

Public Law / Community Care / Judicial Review

Do this quickly.

Judicial Review has short time limits. Proceedings normally have to be brought promptly and generally within three months of the decision being challenged.

Do not assume that making a council complaint automatically stops legal time limits.

Sometimes the only body capable of giving the remedy you actually need is the court.

For example, where the real dispute concerns:

• existing care orders
• parental contact
• placement orders
• discharge applications
• ongoing proceedings

get specialist legal advice about the appropriate Family Court application.

Complaints procedures and court proceedings serve completely different purposes.

Judicial Review examines the lawfulness of public-body decision-making.

It is not simply another opportunity to argue that Children's Services made the wrong judgment.

Specialist legal advice is essential.

Potential public-law challenges can involve:

• illegality
• procedural unfairness
• irrationality
• breach of statutory duty
• human-rights issues

Legal deadlines can be extremely short.

Official guidance: Judicial review procedure (Civil Procedure Rules Part 54) ↗

There is not normally an ordinary appeal against an LGSCO decision.

Where someone believes the Ombudsman's decision itself is legally defective, Judicial Review may potentially be available.

Again, specialist legal advice is required.

If a child is at immediate risk of serious harm:

999 – Police

For non-emergency crime concerns:

101 / your police force's reporting system

For safeguarding concerns, contact the appropriate Children's Social Care safeguarding service as well.

Do not wait for a complaint investigation where there is an immediate safety issue.

The biggest thing to remember

These organisations do different jobs.

Do not send exactly the same complaint to everybody and expect the same result.

Ask yourself:

Is this about poor service or maladministration?

→ Council complaints / LGSCO

Is this serious misconduct by an individual social worker?

→ Employer / Social Work England

Is this about personal-data handling?

→ DPO / ICO

Is this an allegation that someone working with children may have harmed a child?

→ safeguarding/employer/LADO route

Is this a systemic safeguarding problem?

→ Safeguarding Partnership / Ofsted

Is this systemic council governance failure?

→ Monitoring Officer / Scrutiny / elected leadership / MHCLG

Is the council already under government intervention?

→ Find the Commissioners / Ministerial Envoys / Inspectors

Does the child need an independent voice?

→ IRO / independent advocacy / Children's Commissioner Help at Hand

Is this about a government department failing you?

→ Department complaint → MP → PHSO where applicable

Do you actually need a legally binding decision?

→ Specialist solicitor / Family Court / Public Law / Judicial Review

YOU ARE NOT LIMITED TO ONE GENERIC CHILDREN'S SERVICES COMPLAINTS INBOX.

There is an entire network of:

• statutory officers
• regulators
• ombudsmen
• safeguarding partners
• elected representatives
• scrutiny bodies
• central government departments
• advocates
• independent reviewers
• and courts

The correct route depends on what has happened and what remedy you actually need.

Save this.

Share it with parents, grandparents, kinship carers, foster carers, care leavers and young people involved with Children's Services.

A huge part of the battle is simply knowing where you are allowed to turn next.

This guide relates to England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different systems. It is general information, not individual legal advice.