Did Ombudsman For Wales Ignore Whistleblowing By An Independent Investigator?

Having survived Cyngor Gwynedd council's SS complaints process, you then have the option of approaching the Ombudsman for Wales. If the Ombudsman accepts your complaint, they will investigate the council for how it dealt with your complaint...

A 2019 Ombudsman for Wales report into Cyngor Gwynedd council's senior SS officers and the children's customer care/complaints team focussed on senior officer's interference with the Stage 2 complaints process and their treatment of an Independent Investigator...

The Stage 2 complaint - an investigation of an assessment undertaken by the children's department - was running alongside a previous Ombudsman's investigation of failings and non compliance with recommendations from a 2010 report. The Independent Investigator and the Ombudsman even had discussions to work out the remit and who would be focussing on what...

The council received the completed Stage 2 report in November, 2018. All points of complaint were upheld. The SS department refused to accept the report...

Emails show the investigator had contacted the Ombudsman with 'concerns' that the council were not following the process. A phone conversation took place where presumably the Investigator raised issues with officer's 'pushback' and refusal to accept the report. Whistleblowing?

The Ombudsman did not act nor advise the Investigator leaving her with little choice but to continue with the 'process' and 'work' with the senior officer's. If a report is not accepted by the council do the Investigator and Independent Person still get paid...?

(The Ombudsman has refused requests for the detail of this conversation to be released)

The Ombudsman commented in his report -

But 'hard evidence' was provided to the Ombudsman...!!!
Copies of the original report and the amended report and the 'final' report were sent to the Ombudsman for comparison. The senior officers had managed to downgrade the complaint against the social worker from 'upheld' to not requiring to be upheld and a recommendation removed. In all, four to five pages critical of the department are missing...

This was pointed out to the Ombudsman - the report was not changed...

The Ombudsman chose to single out the social worker for her disingenuity but bad behaviour by her line manager and other senior officer's involved were not properly addressed. Whilst the report was indeed 'damning' the Ombudsman had failed to address the main thrust of the complaint - that the second assessment was as fake and 'predetermined' as the first.

Concerns were raised with the Ombudsman that he had investigated the wrong complaint and a review of his investigation was asked for. The Ombudsman's office did indeed review the work of the Ombudsman and found no fault with the Ombudsman. The review was dismissed...

The Ombudsman for Wales also failed to investigate Gwynedd council for non compliance with recommendations from a previous investigation. A complaint to the Ombudsman was not acted upon and so the 'work' undertaken by Gwynedd council was ticked off as complete - when it was not...

The Ombudsman wrote personally to apologise for the failing of the officer and a policy of verifying evidence from Welsh councils before ticking the box has now been implemented. The Ombudsman felt unable to return to the council on this matter due to the box already ticked so non compliance and false assurances from the senior officers was not investigated...