The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) has just published an analysis of adult social care complaints considered in 2013.
Note that the report focuses on complaints about services provided for adults who need extra support. This includes older people, people with learning disabilities, people with a physical disability, people with a sensory impairment, people with mental ill health, and carers.
The report considers complaints about all types of registered social care providers (local authority, commissioned by a council or privately funded).
The Local Government Ombudsman may consider a complaint, when the complainant has pursued all stages of the informal and formal complaints procedures against an authority or council.
The publication of the report was accompanied by the following statement by the LGO:
As England’s social care ombudsman, the LGO receives complaints about a wide variety of issues across social care from the administration of blue badge schemes to safeguarding.
The LGO has seen a 130 per cent increase in adult social care complaints since it took on responsibility for registered private care providers in 2009; making it the fastest growing area of the LGO’s work, with the highest uphold rate for all areas of complaints. In the last year, there has been a 14 per cent increase in the number of complaints and enquiries received about adult social care.
In 2013 the LGO received 2,456 complaints and enquiries about adult social care. This is a small number in the context of 1.3 million users of adult social care in England. Forty per cent of the total number of complaints the LGO receives relate to 25 council areas.
Our complaints data suggests there is more to do to provide assurance about complaints handling.
Over the last few years there have been a number of reviews that have looked at healthcare complaints. We must not wait for a crisis in adult care to examine more closely the way social care commissioners and providers deal with complaints.
I hope that by publishing these statistics, I will encourage care providers to scrutinise their approach to ensure that the public are given a complaints process that is easy to access, effective and accountable.
I also hope that by raising these issues more people will be aware of how to raise concerns and seek redress, and feel reassured that there is an independent ombudsman that they can turn to when providers fail to resolve complaints.”
In setting out a vision for future social care complaints, the LGO also calls for a set of common standards for complaint handling, with mandated data returns to CQC, clear signposting obligations, and the right to advocacy support when complaining about care services.”