Feedback guidance

Adult social care compliments, feedback and complaints

This guidance is for adults who use social care services, their unpaid carers, family and / or their representative. It explains what you should expect when you give compliments and feedback about a service or a member of staff. It also explains how to make a complaint.

Adult social care includes all types of care and support, including personal care and other practical help. It includes care and support arranged and funded privately, and services commissioned by us. It is for people aged 18 and over who need help because of age, illness or disability.

For example

  • provision of equipment
  • help in your home with daily living
  • community support and activities
  • day centres
  • residential and nursing care
  • home adaptations
  • information and advice
  • advocacy
  • support for carers
  • social care assessments and funding

We want to improve the quality of our services. We encourage you to tell us your view or give us feedback. Feedback can be positive, negative or neutral.

A complaint can cover any concerns you have. It can be about our service or a member of staff that have not met the standard you would expect.

How to make a compliment, complaint or give feedback

If you have a compliment, complaint, or feedback about us or any of our adult social care staff, you can get your voice heard:

Complaint process

You can make a complaint if we

  • do something wrong
  • fail to do something we should have done
  • do something we should not do
  • provide a poor standard of service

It is not treated as a complaint when:

  • you are appealing against a decision which has been arrived at properly.

Complaints which are unclear or very general may be difficult to investigate. We may ask you to provide more information.

When things go wrong, we will

  • listen to you and treat you with respect. We ask that you do the same for our staff
  • treat you fairly
  • keep you involved in the process
  • be open and honest

We aim to put things right as soon as possible.

If a complaint cannot be resolved informally, we have a formal complaint procedure.

If you make a complaint you

  • will not suffer any penalty or discrimination as a result
  • will have your complaint acknowledged and investigated
  • will receive a reasoned and honest response
  • can expect us to try to understand things from your point of view

If you feel you may need advocacy support to make your complaint, we will talk to you about how access this.

For us to consider a complaint and to be clear about how it can be resolved, we ask you to

  • tell us clearly what has gone wrong, with as much factual information as possible
  • give us the information we may ask you for
  • tell us what you would like us to consider doing to put things right
  • make any special requirements known to us as soon as you can
  • remain calm, and treat our staff in a courteous, respectful way
  • remember that we are trying to help

What happens next

Within three working days we will:

  • acknowledge receipt
  • clarify any details needed to progress
  • inform you about what will happen
  • tell you how long this may take

We aim to respond to your complaint within 25 working days from agreement of the statement of your complaint. If your complaint is complex or needs further investigation, we will agree with you a plan of how we will deal with your complaint. We will also provide the timescale for responding.

If you are unhappy with our formal written response, you must tell us the areas you are unhappy with. Inform our team within 14 days of receipt of the complaint response. We may then offer an ‘alternative dispute resolution meeting’ (ADRM) with the aim of bringing the matter to a satisfactory close. In some circumstances a meeting of this kind is beneficial. It will aid communication and understanding of complex and/or emotive subjects.

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO)

If you remain unhappy with the outcome of your complaint, you can raise it further.

The Ombudsman investigates complaints in a fair and independent way. It does not take sides. It is a free service.

The Ombudsman expects you to have given us the chance to deal with your complaint before you contact them. If you have not heard from us within a reasonable time, it may decide to investigate your complaint anyway.

The LGSCO is the final stage for complaints about us and some other organisations providing local public services. It also investigates complaints about all adult social care providers. Including care homes and home care agencies for people who self-fund their care.

Please note that on occasion there are complaints the LGSCO cannot or will not be able to investigate. In such circumstances, the LGSCO will explain clearly if this is the case, and the reasons why this decision has been given.

Help and advice

You can get more help and advice from the following organisations

In this section