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A teenager who was left feeling like she needed to take her own life after she reported she was the victim of serious sexual abuse was let down by Kent County Council and Croydon Council, an ombudsman has ruled.
The girl, who lives in Kent, was left without appropriate support from both authorities after she'd been sexually abused in Croydon as a youngster.
As as result, she's now been awarded more than £2,000 in compensation.
The teenager's mother had reported the crime to police and was told by officers she would be contacted by a social worker.
In June, 2018, KCC received a referral from the police stating the historic allegation of sexual abuse had been made.
KCC advised the police to refer the case to Croydon Council for investigation but KCC did not contact the mother or the girl to assess if support was needed.
A second police referral was received by KCC in September 2018 relating to the same incident originally reported.
KCC made contact with the family following the second referral and offered some support.
The mother felt the support offered was not appropriate and would not address the issues her daughter was experiencing.
Furthermore, the social worker did not speak to the girl directly before completing her assessment despite this being a clear requirement of the statutory guidance.
Now, after an investigation, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) is urging councils to place children at the centre of any decision-making process in cross-border child protection cases, after the girl was found to have been left without any appropriate support.
The ombudsman’s probe also found neither authority took responsibility for the girl.
It found both councils took no further action at the initial referral stage and that there was no direct contact between either council for nearly two years.
During this time the girl’s mental health deteriorated and she made three attempts to take her own live and went missing for a period.
Neither council worked together to safeguard the girl.
The ombudsman found Croydon Council at fault for failing to follow statutory guidance because it did not convene a strategy discussion following the girl’s initial disclosure.
This led to an uncoordinated response, lack of information sharing, failure to identify potential risk and poor victim care.
As the girl lived in Kent, KCC had responsibility to properly assess and consider her needs.
According to the ombudsman KCC believes appropriate support was offered but the probe found the council failed to carry out an assessment of the girl’s needs in a timely way.
It also failed to adopt a child centred approach when it eventually did assess the girl.
The ombudsman also criticised the support provided to the girl’s mother which she said she needed to support her daughter.
KCC failed to properly assess the mother’s needs which added to her distress.
The authority also incorrectly told the mother it may need to refer her to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) because of the nature of the case.
'In this case, both councils were too quick to pass the buck and look for reasons not to take action or ownership...'
This would have threatened her employment and added to her distress.
And as a result of the probe, KCC has also agreed to conduct an audit of 50 cases closed in similar circumstances.
Michael King, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said: "This is a key example of the very real impact on vulnerable children when councils do not fully understand their responsibilities.
“In this case, both councils were too quick to pass the buck and look for reasons not to take action or ownership, while in the middle there was a distressed teenager desperately in need of significant support.
“We have issued this report to give other councils the opportunity to examine their own child protection strategies, and identify any learning they may benefit from to ensure vulnerable children in their areas are supported properly.”
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s role is to remedy injustice and share learning from investigations to help improve public services.
'There was a distressed teenager desperately in need of significant support....'
As a result of the investigation, KCC has agreed to pay £2,150 to the family.
The ombudsman has the power to make recommendations to improve processes for the wider public.
In this case KCC will remind all staff dealing with children’s services complaints when the statutory complaints process should be used, and who can make a complaint under this process.
Both councils should share the learning points from the case across their organisations to ensure staff are aware of their responsibilities in respect of information sharing, professional curiosity and cross-border child protection referrals.
Matt Dunkley, KCC corporate director of children, young people and education said: “Although both KCC and LB of Croydon have accepted that there was a short delay in offering support exacerbated by the cross authority involvement, we are confident that actions taken in relation to ensuring the safeguarding of the individual and the offer of ongoing support, subsequently declined by the family, were the correct response and in compliance with current government legislation and guidance as it has also been interpreted by many other local authorities in similar cases.
"Some of the ombudsman’s conclusions suggest we should have offered therapy services to this family.
"These are services that we are not statutorily required to provide, nor funded to provide, and are not provided by any local council in similar circumstances.
"In order to provide what the ombudsman suggests we should, both funding of and statutory definition of services provided by local government would have to change.
"While this may or may not be desirable, we question whether it is in the remit of the LGSCO to make any judgement of KCC on services we and the rest of local government are not currently required or funded to provide.
“We do agree that the national “Working Together” guidance is lacking and unclear in its current form regarding Initial S47 Strategy investigations, and have offered to work with the ombudsman to seek greater clarity from government in its guidance.
“Our views and conclusions remain substantially different to those expressed by the LGSCO and KCC will reserve our legal position regarding the LGSCO conclusions and some of the suggested remedies which we believe inappropriate and misguided.
"We will be contacting the DfE to suggest improving the clarity of current Government legislation and guidance in such cases."
A spokesman for Croydon Council added: “Keeping vulnerable young people safe is a council priority, and in this case we did not provide the standard of support that we would expect.
"We accept the Ombudsman’s recommendations, which will help us improve the way we work with other authorities and share information to support vulnerable young people.”
