Agenda item

The report provides information on the number, type and other information on adult social care complaints received during the period April 2017 - March 2018. It also highlights some examples of the many positive things people have said about the provision of adult social care in Medway over the same period and the service improvements the Council has made as a result of lessons learnt from complaints.

Discussion

The report provided information on complaints and compliments received between April 2017 and March 2018. As part of the overall quality assurance framework it was important to understand where people were not happy with the services provided in order that these concerns could be addressed for all service users.

98 complaints had been processed during the year, an increase compared to the 83 handled during 2016/17 and 82 in 2015/16. It was acknowledged that performance in the last year was not as good as it should have been. Changes had been put in place to the way in which the handing of complaints was monitored. It was noted that performance had improved during the current financial year. For quarter 1, there had been improvement in the timeliness of performance with 67% of complaints having been handled within the agreed timescale. For June 2018, this figure was 80%. A significant proportion of complaints had been upheld which demonstrated that there were issues to address within Adult Social Care.

Financial issues and a lack of or poor communication were the two areas for which there had been the most complaints. The importance of ensuring that correct information in relation to cases and complaints was recorded on the Council’s software system and that this recording needed to be timely, had been emphasised to staff. Mobile working had been rolled out across all staff within adult social care with positive staff feedback having been received about its impact. Staff were now able to update records while working remotely. The number of complaints in relation to a lack of or poor communication was also a concern. One cause of this had been lack of staff capacity with work being undertaken to ensure that resources were allocated efficiently to help ensure more effective communication in the future. A number of staff had been specifically allocated to be the first point of contact for any new calls, contacts and e-mails. These were now responded to immediately. The Manager for Social Care Complaints attended Performance and Quality Assurance meetings on a regular basis to report back on complaint volumes and the nature of complaints received. She had also run some workshops with practice managers to cover the principles of complaint handling and how lessons are learnt from complaints.

A Committee Member was concerned that in January 2018, no complaints had been responded to within the target time of 20 days and that 10 complaints had been carried forward from 2017/18 to the current year. The Member asked what had caused the delay in responding to complaints.

Officers advised that the winter period had been particularly challenging with there having been high levels of staff sickness within the service that had impacted on the January performance. The Assistant Director of Adult Social Care was meeting with his Heads of Service each month to review outstanding complaints and ensure that they were actioned appropriately. There was currently only one outstanding complaint that had exceeded the 20 day target for a response and that had been the case for the majority of the last three months. It was noted that the complaints that had been carried over to the current year had not all exceeded the 20 day response timeframe. There was also a need to ensure that complaint responses were of high quality, particularly as a poor quality response was likely to result in a further complaint or referral to the Local Government Ombudsman. Many complaints involved multiple Council teams as well as external organisations, which could make responding within the target timeframe more challenging.

Decision

The Committee noted and commented on the report and requested that a letter of thanks be sent to all those who had sent a letter of compliment, during 2017/18, in relation Adult Social Care.