Helping Adam

Adam* used to be in care and had an Advocate to support him during this time. The Advocate helped Adam to get the support he needed, like helping him get his own records.

Adam had a daughter and wanted to get her records from the local authority, like his Advocate had helped him to do before. He talked to his daughter’s social worker about this, and the social worker said they would take care of it.

After waiting for a few months without any updates or getting the records, Adam got in touch with his Advocate again for help. He had also tried contacting his daughter’s social worker multiple times but didn’t get any replies.

Adam’s Advocate helped him by trying to get in touch with his daughter’s social worker and the person in charge of handling record requests. They tried many times and sent emails at least every couple of weeks. Despite sending lots of emails, they rarely got a reply. It took several months to get the request to the right department.

By the time the request was finally handled, Adam’s daughter was already in care. This meant that Adam did not have the legal right to request her records anymore. When Adam had first asked for the records, he did have the right to request this. As the request had taken so long to get to the right place, by the time it was looked into, things had changed.

It took more than a year for Adam to get a final answer. For most of this time, Adam and his Advocate had been trying to chase up what was happening and had got no answers. His Advocate helped Adam to write a complaint about how long everything took and how the local authority handled his request. The local authority looked into the complaint but did not change their decision, and there were more delays in telling Adam what was happening. When Adam got the final answer, he was unhappy with it and wanted to take the complaint to the next level. The local authority said they would not look into it further and gave different reasons about why Adam could not get his daughter’s records.

Adam’s Advocate explained that Adam could contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and ask them to look at how the local authority had handled his request and the complaints he made. The ICO found that the local authority made several mistakes and wrote a report about to explain this. They sent this report to Adam, his Advocate, and the local authority.

The ICO suggested that the local authority should do their own investigation to learn from their mistakes and improve for the future.

Adam’s Advocate helped him get ready for a meeting with the Assistant Director of the team that looked into the issues. After the investigation, Adam got a letter from the local authority apologising for their mistakes and saying they had made improvements. Adam also received some money as compensation to apologise for how the mistakes had affected him.

Even though Adam did not get everything he wanted, with his Advocate’s help, he learned more about his rights and the process. Adam also raised awareness about the problems he faced so that hopefully, other people will not have the same issues in the future.

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the people we support