Agenda item

The attached report is for members to note.

The Committee was informed that the management of Adult Social Care complaints had continued to improve year on year and this was encouraging for the service.  At the same time, compliments also continued to increase year on year showing that the service was getting things right.

There were a number of changes that may have an impact on complaints over the next few years including the introduction and impact of the Care Act; the changes that were currently being considered by the Local Government Ombudsman who was consulting on these changes, and the proposed introduction of an Appeals Process which was being considered for all decisions.  The implications of these would need to be considered by the Complaints & Information Team and it will have to look at how this would impact on Havering Adult Social Care in the long term.

As with all local authorities, there was the added challenge of having to balance the services with the reduced available resources and decreasing budgets which could have an impact on how it dealt with complaints.  It was important to ensure that information was captured in a meaningful way to assist services in identifying areas that might require improvement as well as those that were implementing good practice.  Members were reminded that it should be noted that there would be a change in how information was going to be obtained with the transfer across to the present CRM system, but the Complaints & Information Team would need to ensure that the relevant data for reporting was maintained.

The Committee was reminded that in the previous year’s report it was highlighted that consideration was needed in relation to Public Health complaints.  These would be published separately on their own web page.

The Committee’s attention was then drawn to a number of aspects contained within the report concerning some unusual aspects of the out-turn reports, for example: The number of cases dealt with by the LGO had fallen from 10 to eight (and six of those had either not been investigated or had been discontinued or that no maladministration had been found).  Complaints overall had fallen from 123 (2011/12) to 108.

During the last year the Complaints teams had been reorganised and re-structured – in part because of internal changes and also to prepare for the impact of the Care Act.  Complaints concerning Commissioning had fallen from 20 to 14, but there was a corresponding increase in complaints concerning External Homecare from 17 to 24.  The largest percentage fall was recorded by the Preventative Team where the fall had been from 13 to six.

Members asked about various elements within the report, in particular: the matter of staff behaviour, what were the outcomes? In reply the Service stated that this was generally addressed by further training.  Where there were disputes, the primary cause was largely due to the charges being raised and that some service users did not understand them fully.

An observation was made concerning the targets for complaint responses being missed and Members were informed that this was due in no small measure to the involvement of outside bodies, many of whom had different time-scales to the Council and over which the Service had little control.  If they were taken out of the calculation, the Service’s response times were much better – but that did not mean that improvement could not – or would not –be continued to be made.

The Committee noted the report which had already been considered and approved by Overview and Scrutiny.