Adult's services complaints
It is important to give feedback to practitioners about your experiences of adult social care. This helps us to know what we are doing well and where we need to improve. You don’t need to make a formal complaint to comment on your experiences.
Feedback can be positive, negative or neutral. Compliments and feedback are just as important as complaints. A complaint can cover any concerns you have about a service or member of staff that have not met the standard you would expect.
All our complaints processes are available to complete online however, there are further options if you can't do it online.
What is adult social care?
Adult social care includes all types of care and support including personal care and other practical help. It is assessed under the Care Act 2014 when a local authority is involved. It also includes care and support attended and funded privately, and care and support funded by the NHS. It is for people aged 18 and over who need help because of age, illness or disability.
Here are some examples:
- Provision of equipment
- Help in your home with daily living
- Community support and activities
- Day centres
- Residential care
- Home adaptations
- Information and advice
- Advocacy
- Support for carers
Some concerns cannot be taken under the statutory adult complaints process. If this is the case we will advise you and let you know if we can take your complaint under our general complaint process.
If you are not happy with your care
Adult Social Services encourage service users, families and/or representatives to speak to the relevant team manager of the service they are dealing with in the first instance regarding any concerns or issues they may have. We aim to resolve all concerns as quickly as possible through discussions with the team manager.
If you continue to have a problem, you can make a formal complaint to the Council. Statutory adult social care complaints follow a two-stage process.
Stage one - local resolution
Your complaint will be passed to the appropriate manager to investigate and provide you with a response within ten working days of the complaint being acknowledged.
If the service manager is unable to provide you with a response within ten working days of the complaint being acknowledged, they will update you on the progress and inform you that they are extending the timescale by an additional ten working days, and the reason(s) for this extension.
If for any reason the response will fall outside of the extended timescales, the service will contact you and agree with you suitable intervals for updating you on the progress of your complaint.
Stage two - escalating your initial complaint
If you are unhappy or dissatisfied with the outcome to your stage one complaint and the manager is unable to resolve your concerns, you are entitled to escalate your complaint to stage two within 25 working days following your stage one response.
The person considering the complaint at stage two will not be the same person that considered the complaint at stage one.
Once we have received your request to escalate your complaint, you will receive an acknowledgement within five working days confirming the details of your complaint and suggested next steps.
If the complaint is complex, we may need more than 20 working days to respond. If this is the case, then we will provide you with an update on the progress to your complaint and advise you if we need an additional ten working days.
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman
If you have been through our complaints procedure and have received a final response and you are still unhappy, you can ask the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) to review your complaint.
The LGSCO investigates complaints in a fair and independent way. It does not take sides. It is a free service.
The LGSCO expects you to have given us a 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 look into your complaint anyway. This is usually up to 12 weeks but can be longer for social care complaints that follow a statutory process.
Make a complaint, comment or compliment about adult social care services
Make an anonymous complaint
You can also raise an anonymous complaint about adult social care services. We will not take any personal details from you and will be unable to respond.
The adult social care team will review the anonymous complaint and decide whether they can appropriately conduct an investigation into the issues raised.
If you choose to make your complaint anonymously, please be aware that we cannot respond to you or share any findings from the investigation. If you would like a response to your complaint, you should not make it anonymously.
Make an anonymous complaint about adult social care services
Further advice
For further information regarding our complaints procedures, see our customer feedback and complaints handling policy (PDF).
You can also contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman for further advice.