The purpose of the report is to share with People Overview and Scrutiny the annual complaints and compliments report for 2022/23 before it is published on the council’s website. Whilst Local Authorities are not required to produce an annual report on complaints relating to corporate activities, and are only required to do so on those submitted about Adults and Children’s Services, this report details all compliments and complaints made by or on behalf of customers, that are investigated under the:

·         Adults Statutory Complaints process

·         Children’s Statutory Complaints process

·         Children’s Corporate Complaints process

·         RBWM’s Formal Corporate Complaints policy

The Panel are asked to note the report and agree that the report is published on the council’s website and that the annual report continues to be produced and presented at future Overview and Scrutiny Panels.

Nikki Craig, Assistant Director of HR, Corporate Projects and IT, explained that there was a statutory requirement on the council to publish compliments and complaints data on adult and children’s services but RBWM published complaints data for all service areas. In total there had been:

• 1,408 contacts made with the complaints team.
• 269 contacts were progressed as complaints.
• 16 were for adult services and 85 were for children’s services.
• 50% of adult services complaints had been responded to within timescales.
• There had been 38 compliments recorded for adult services.
• The vast majority of complaints on children’s services were partially upheld.
• 45% of children’s services complaints had been responded to within timescales.
• There had been 69 compliments recorded for children’s services.

The report included narrative on areas of improvement and lessons learned by service areas in response to complaints. The council was performing well compared to similar local authorities.

Lin Ferguson, Executive Director of Children’s Services and Education, added that complaints in children’s services could be complex and therefore took time to resolve. She was disappointed that timescales were not as good as they could be but the relationship between the social work team and the complaints team had improved. There was a lot of learning done from complaints and action was taken to make improvements.

Kevin McDaniel, Executive Director of Adult Social Care and Health, said that the vast majority of complaints in adult services stemmed from disagreements about the cost of care and contributions required from residents. Additional resource had been focused on improving communication around this to residents.

Lynne Lidster, Director of Commissioning – People at Optalis, explained that a debt prevention officer post had been created. This role looked at developing an ongoing financial awareness training programme, to hold surgeries with practitioners, to develop a secondary care dashboard and supporting residents from getting into debt with the council.

Councillor C Da Costa expressed her concern at the number of complaints which had not been responded to within timescales. She asked if the additional deadline was not being requested or was this deadline also being missed.

Lin Ferguson said that staff were not always requesting the additional deadline. Work was being done to change this and make sure that deadlines were recorded correctly. This was also important in ensuring that families were kept up to date and aware of why complaints could take time to be resolved.

Councillor Shaw noted that the response time to complaints in adult services had improved. He asked if there was any particular reason which could be associated with this improvement and if this could be used to improve response times in children’s services.

Kevin McDaniel said that the team had ensured that complaints did not become stuck between different teams and that complaints were progressed through the system in a timely manner. Learning had been shared between the service areas and it was hoped that there would be improvements shown in future years.

Councillor Story noted that children’s statutory complaints had gone from 79% to 45% of complaints being responded to within timescales. This was a big drop and he wondered if there was any reason for this.

Lin Ferguson said that there was no clear issue or theme which was causing this but a substantial decline had been noticed.

Kevin McDaniel said that children’s statutory complaints were rare but were often very long and complex cases around children in the care of RBWM. There had been three complaints received in this area and two had been responded to outside of timescales.

Councillor Story referred to the long delay in responses from the Housing team.

Kevin McDaniel explained that the Housing team received some of the highest numbers of complaints with a strong demand being seen. However, a significant majority of these were based around positions on the housing register.

Councillor Brar asked what measures would be taken to make sure that residents who needed to pay for adult social care did not fall into debt.

Lynne Lidster said that the speed of residents receiving their first invoice could be improved, with the aim of this being within 30 days. If invoices were sent out late, this could make it difficult for residents to budget effectively. Individual circumstances and understanding the level of care required was the main reason for a delay to invoices being processed.

Kevin McDaniel said that there were different payment plans that could be offered and the priority was making sure that families had enough money to be safe, warm and dry.

Councillor Shaw asked if there was any link between the increase in response times to children’s services complaints and the number that were being fully or partially upheld.

Lin Ferguson said that staff were being transparent in their responses to complaints and were able to understand where things could be improved.

Councillor Sharpe asked if there was anything in the report which should be highlighted to the Panel as a concern and if there was an action plan to improve these areas.

Kevin McDaniel said that it was expected there would be more complaints around the cost of adult social care due to the cost of living situation. This was why the team had been ensuring that residents were aware of the cost of adult social care and what their options were if they had any issues in paying.

Lin Ferguson said that communication was an area of focus, making sure that parents and families were kept up to date on the progress of their complaint.

Councillor C Da Costa asked if it was possible in future reports if complaints about financial contributions could be separated to other complaints, as this could paint an inaccurate picture that the council was receiving more complaints.

Kevin McDaniel suggested that this could be done by reviewing how data was captured in the database on complaints.

Nikki Craig added that there was a drop down list which could be selected to highlight the reason for the complaint being made.

ACTION – Kevin McDaniel to work with Nikki Craig to explore if complaints could be separated out for future reports, to highlight how many complaints were made about financial contributions.

AGREED UNANIMOUSLY: That the People Overview and Scrutiny Panel noted the report and agreed:

i)             That the report was published on the council’s website.

ii)            That the annual report continued to be produced and presented at future Overview and Scrutiny Panels.