Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I was looking at the professional practice of social workers and that is not the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman's office. In that particular context, the answer is "No".

I believe it is right to protect the interests of vulnerable children and other individuals and sometimes that causes a need to get a proper balance between protecting individuals and freedom of information. That is one of the dilemmas that these jobs pose and one has to be able to deal with them.

We are particularly proud of the case book. We believe we were the first to introduce such a comprehensive, regular description of cases. It helps to get the message across. People can learn from other people's mistakes and that saves complaints to the office. One can also get generalised messages across about complaint handling, for example, where one sees the same complaint occurring in several places. One can say people need to be careful and watch out for this. By doing this in such a way that cases are divided into clear categories, people can look at the ones of concern to them and that makes the case book accessible. Although it is quite a chunky read, people can focus on the bits that matter to them. Every member of the Welsh Assembly gets a link to the latest quarter's copy and many of them find it quite useful in both their general work and constituency work. I hope something similar here would have a similar benefit.

I say to the investigators that they must tell the story. To make a complaint accessible, they should not be repetitive and they should use plain language, tell the story from beginning to end, say what are their conclusions and make the recommendations clear. The impact of reports that are much too lengthy and complex is greatly reduced. The other thing I have done consistently is to put summaries in every report and, increasingly, in settlements where cases are settled without an investigation report. Nonetheless, I produce a summary of it because there is learning to be found there too and that makes life easier.

The model complaints policy was promoted rather than imposed. It has been adopted by the Welsh Government and its departments. It is, therefore, used by government and local government. There is a separate health complaints process but it is identical in every important provision. There is a statutory health complaints process and a voluntary model complaints process but all leading public agencies in Wales have adopted the latter. That was done by engaging with them in its development and getting them to accept ownership for implementation. That has made life much easier.