To consider the contents of the report.

The Head of HR and Corporate Projects introduced the item and explained that she would update Members on figures that were relevant to children’s services, rather than the report as a whole.

The Council had received 644 complaints in 2017/18, compared to 665 the previous year. Of these 37, or 5.6 per cent, related to children’s services. Members were informed that there was a three-stage complaints process; progression to stage 2 meant an independent person would be tasked with investigating the complaint, and progression to stage 3 would entail a panel needing to be assembled to resolve the complaint. Of the 37 complaints made about children’s services in 2017/18, three were progressed to stage 2 and none to stage 3. A request had been made to progress to stage 3, but this would not be resolved until 2018/19 and was therefore not included in the figures. The Head of HR and Corporate Projects said the themes of complaints followed a similar pattern to previous years, with the most common types of complaint being a perceived failure to follow policy, perceived lack of action, or attitude of staff. The Head of HR and Corporate Projects informed Members that 16 per cent of complaints against children’s services were fully upheld, compared to 25 per cent in 2016/17. However there had been a reduction in the number of complaints that were responded to within the relevant required timescales. Members were informed that the Complaints Team were now using a new IT system that would automatically alert them when a complaint was close to its response expiry date.

Regarding complaints about the Council made to the Local Government Ombudsman, Members were informed that there had been 11 referrals for cases relating to children’s services and that none of them had been put through to a full investigation by the Ombudsman. Five of these had been referred back to the Council and the remainder had been closed. The Head of HR and Corporate Projects told Members that a case could be referred to the Ombudsman at any stage of the complaints process. Members were told that examples of learning from complaints made about children’s services were included in the main report.

Regarding compliments, Members were informed that the number received by children’s services had increased to 97 compared to 56 the previous year. The Chairman noted the number of compliments received by youth services in particular, and stated she was delighted at the overall number of compliments to be received by children’s services.

Cllr Wilson noted that responding to complaints in a timely manner was an issue and asked for more information on this. The Director of Children’s Services explained that the Council had taken time to understand the root causes of residents’ grievances and the issues involved in order to help reduce the number of complaints in future, but this had necessitated having to take more time than was outlined in the statutory timescales. The most complex cases, involving social care, took the most amount of time to resolve. The Director of Children’s Services informed Members that there had been a cultural shift in social care to better understand the issues affecting residents and provide staff with the appropriate training as a result. However he also stated that a number of complaints were from residents who disagreed with, or disliked, the professional judgement of officers.

Cllr Richards asked about the representations made by young people in section 7.17 of the main report and asked if these were different from complaints. The Director of Children’s Services explained that representations related to young people raising an issue or concern in their statutory review, which could be raised as a complaint if they wished. The use of the word representation was encouraged as it sounded less adversarial than complaint. It was noted that one young person had registered a complaint about children’s services.

Responding to a question from Cllr Hollingsworth, the Director of Children’s Services stated that for a complaint to be closed, the complainant had to be satisfied that their complaint had been resolved and it could only be closed after they had confirmed this was the case.

Cllr Wilson noted in the appendix to the LGO report that it was stated 69 per cent of complaints against the Council were upheld. However Members noted that this figure did not include complaints to the Ombudsman that were either incomplete or invalid, referred back to the Council, or closed after the Ombudsman’s initial enquiries. Cllr Wilson stated that the figures in the appendix were therefore misleading and suggested that the Council should write to the Ombudsman to point this out. This was unanimously agreed by the Panel.

The contents of the report was noted by Members.