Issue - meetings

The Director of Adult Services presented the Adult Social Care Complaints Annual Report to the Committee.  This detailed the complaints enquiries and compliments received during the period April 2017 to March 2018.

There is a statutory requirement to publish the report annually.

Adult Social Care complaints have decreased slightly.  Ombudsman enquiries however, have increased slightly.  Out of the nine received in the relevant period two were found to be maladministration injustice.

The highest number of complaints received related to external home care.  These ranged from time keeping to not staying for the required period or at all.  These have been recurring themes.

The number of complaints upheld in 2017-18 was 51 with 52 not being upheld and 5 being withdrawn. A new Social Care system was introduced in February 2018 and this will allow for improved management of information and it should help to ensure consistency across the service. 

It was noted that there are still complaints involving financial information as a result of a change in provision and also in relation to frustrated visit charges. The Charging Policy has been revised and is on Havering’s website.  Service users need to give notice that services will not be required within an appropriate time frame to ensure there are no charges.

Overall response times to complaints need to improve although there has been some improvement. Complaints relating to multiple agencies will have a single response.

Monitoring information has been an issue though the main equalities characteristics are being captured.  Marital status and sexual orientation have been factors which have not been routinely recorded and so efforts are in place to improve on that aspect.

Compliments have decreased by 21% though this is believed to correlate with a reduction in satisfaction surveys.  It has been believed that too many surveys would become burdensome.  Feedback is required but this needs to be captured in an unobtrusive way.

Member enquiries have declined from 98 in 2016/17 to 68 in 2017/18.  However, only 88% were replied to within timeframes and this needs to be improved to 100%.

Learning from complaints is very important.  Evidencing improvements in the service is crucial. Actions have been reviewed and implemented and further improvements are being driven.  Better integrated working on complaints is needed and being explored.

The Individuals OSSC:

1. Noted the contents of the report and the continued work in resolving and learning from complaints and the challenges faced by the service with increasing demands.

2. Noted the actions identified to improve services and the continued monitoring by the Service and the Complaints & Information Team to ensure these are implemented evidencing service improvements and with a view to reduce similar complaints.

3. Noted the positive feedback to services by way of compliments received and highlighting good practice.