To consider the report.

Kevin McDaniel introduced the report and stated that it was a requirement for the local authority to publish data on adults and children’s complaints. The report, which was originally scheduled for the cancelled September meeting, was based on data from 2021-22.

RBWM had seen a 30% reduction in contacts over the year compared to 2020-21 but there were still around 400 complaints, which was consistent with the year before. 97% of those complaints related to adults and children.

It was worth noting that there was a technicality in the way children’s complaints were reported. There were to types of complaints: statutory complaints, which covered children in need, looked after children and issues relating to social care, including post adoption support, and corporate complaints, which related to education and SEND.

Positive trends included that while there was a similar number of complaints, fewer were upheld in full or partially upheld, which suggested that RBWM were learning and improving. The timeliness in response to complaints across adults and children’s corporate had fallen year on year, particularly in adults, while there was a good improvement in the children’s statutory complaints. This reflected the complexity of complaints coming through and the interconnection of some of the services RBWM delivered.

The report covered the views from the local government and social care ombudsman which was the external body residents could go to after exhausting RBWM’s complaints process. While there were more decisions from the Ombudsman last year, this was no reflection on an increasing measure of quality but was rather a range of more people being prepared to take complaints through.

Kevin McDaniel concluded by recognising that this was both a complaints and compliments report and noted that while there were a similar number of compliments for adults as in previous years, there was almost over threefold increase in the number of compliments for children’s services in the year. This reflected positively on the increased communication and the effort that colleagues, particularly in Achieving for Children, had put into increasing the quality of communications with families.

Councillor Tisi asked how complaints were categorised when reporting these through the council’s website, and whether the terminology of a corporate or statutory complaint was raised or if this was a simpler choice between adult’s or children’s services.

Vanessa Faulkner, Service Lead – HR People Services, confirmed that it was both of these options. Complainants could select the area of either adults or children and also the type of complaint.

Councillor Tisi asked if the terminology of these categories was explained on the website as it was not day-to-day language that somebody would necessarily know.

Vanessa Faulkner stated that guidance was provided on the form surrounding the complaints process.

Councillor Tisi asked if there was anything RBWM could be doing with regards to areas such as SEND in order to avoid complaints from happening, such as signposting paters better to other areas to get advice.

Kevin McDaniel stated that a lot of signposting already occurred, particularly in relation to SEND. One thing that was being noticed was that because of the complexity of trying to find places for many young people with additional needs, families would often start a number of conversations if they hadn’t had the responsiveness they wanted from RBWM. Often, the council would hear about the independent advice and guidance service talking to the same families who came through the complaints process which could result in confusion due to multiple pieces of advice being given through different channels. The council had a time scale, but this signposting may sometimes cause confusion.

Lin Ferguson, Director of Children’s Services at Achieving for Children, stated that from a children’s services perspective, one of the key reasons that a family would tick when making a complaint was that a particular situation or incident had occurred which they felt wasn’t handled appropriately by officers. Another frequent complaint was that a family was unhappy with a decision, which may be a decision that a child needs to go to a child protection conference. Communication and failing to take information on board were also seen as reasons for frequent complaints.

Lin Ferguson stated that it was important to note that RBWM and AfC tried to learn from information that was given by families in order to do better. Over the last year, a lot of work had been ongoing in children’s services to improve the timeliness of the complaints process which had resulted in an improvement, though not to the full extent of the goal. Relationships between officers in social care and the complaints team so that complaints were talked through. Additionally, a large amount of training with staff had occurred on key issues that come up in complaints, such as clearly stating the difference between fact and personal opinion on assessments that were completed on families. Training had also been ongoing around evidencing statements and ensuring that social workers were clear on what their statements meant, as well as quality assurance to ensure that all documents had correct spelling and grammar.

The Vice-Chairman asked who makes statutory children’s complaints, whether the children themselves made the complaints and if so, how many children had made complaints on their own behalf.

Lin Ferguson stated that very few formal complaints were received from children and young people. This was probably for a variety of reasons, the main one being that young people had a ‘gripe corner’ which was an informal way of raising concerns with the team that worked with them.

Vanessa Faulkner stated that she didn’t have the data on the number of children who had raised complaints but could distribute this number afterward.

ACTION POINT: Vanessa Faulkner to share the number of children who had raised statutory children’s complaints with the Panel.

Councillor Sharpe asked for the key findings from this report.

Kevin McDaniel stated that the ability and willingness to learn was a positive finding from the report. Furthermore, when families and young people were caught between several council services RBWM did itself a disservice of not getting these joint up, and there was room to improve on these complex cases. Finally, it was important to make sure that the mechanics were in place to respond to complaints promptly so that complainants felt cared for and believed that RBWM were interested in listening.

Vanessa Faulkner added that from an internal perspective, the compliments and complaints team were liaising with services much earlier and having regular meetings to learn and share information. This ensured that they were involved in all aspects of the complaint so RBWM could try and progress them as quickly as possible. The engagement with the compliments and complaints team had been really good over the last year and it was hoped that this would improve.

Lin Ferguson added that timeliness was a key issue to improve and whilst it had improved, it wasn’t improving quick enough. Work was ongoing to improve this process.

Councillor Carole Da Costa asked if historical complaints within children’s services were recorded amongst the current data or if this was recorded elsewhere, and whether this was a particular issue that the council faced.

Lin Ferguson confirmed that historical allegations and disclosures would be dealt with separately. The council had a robust process in place to process these allegations.

Kevin McDaniel encouraged people who were unsure about what had happened to them in their past to talk to RBWM. It wouldn’t be treated as a complaint but would be explored together with the individual.

RESOLVED: That the People Overview and Scrutiny Panel notes the report and:

i)           That the report is published on the Council’s website.

ii)          That the annual report continues to be produced and presented at future Overview and Scrutiny panels