A Reading dad has received an apology from the council’s childrens company after a social worker made incorrect assertions about his faith and his marriage during a period of turmoil with his wife.

His complaint was sparked when the council received a safeguarding referral about the welfare of his three young children.

Problems for the family began during a period of strife between the man and his wife.

He decided to leave his family home at the start of 2020, but later raised fears to his children’s school that his wife was physically chastising their children.

The school made a safeguarding referral to Reading Borough Council following the Dad’s concerns.

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The husband used CCTV that had been previously installed to observe building work to monitor the situation at home, and found his wife had physically chastised one of their children.

He then provided the CCTV evidence to a social worker who investigated the complaint.

The next day, the social worker went to the family home, where they expressed concern about physical chastisement.

During the visit, the wife said the Dad also smacked their children, and that she would resolve to use different ways to enforce boundaries for her children.

She also said she had experienced physical and emotional abuse by her husband and his extended family, and that she had ended the relationship because of the abuse.

The social worker conducted a safeguarding assessment, which concluded that the children were at risk of domestic and emotional abuse.

Furthermore, the assessed risks were escalated because of the threat of ‘honour’ based violence.

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At an Initial Child Protection Conference (ICPC) the children were put under a child protection plan.

The Dad complained to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSO) about the assessment.

The husband did complain to the council first, stating that the social worker’s assessment contained incorrect information, such as:

  • The social worker had incorrectly stated that his wife had asked for a divorce
  • Made generalisations about his religion that were discriminatory and that were included to reinforce the social workers narrative around ‘honour’-based violence.
  • Failed to include an incident where he had contacted the police about his wife’s behaviour

The issue was handled by Brighter Futures for Children (BFfC), Reading Borough Council’s childrens service company.

Although BFfC acknowledged it was wrong to make assumptions about his religion, and resolved to not do that again, the Dad asked the LGSO to investigate, arguing the council’s assessment was inaccurate and resulted in it wrongly putting the children on a child protection plan.

Ultimately, the ombudsman found that the social worker was at fault for making assumptions about his religion, and ruled that BFfC should apologise to the Dad.

However, it was judged that it was right to put the children under a protection plan.

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The couple are anonymised as Mr and Mrs X, who reunited after the assessment was undertaken.

A spokesperson for BFfC said: “We accept the findings of the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman in this case.

“We have written to Mr X to apologise for any avoidable distress caused by assumptions made about his religion in our assessment.

“We have already taken action to address the fault identified.”